CD Projekt will start the production phase of the next The Witcher in 2024

Adam Badowski, the new CEO of CD Projekt, told Reuters that the company plans to start the production phase of Polaris, the next The Witcher, in 2024.

“We’d like to have around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year”, Badowski said.

Surprisingly, this is a bit inconsistent with the data released in November 2023, when, according to CD Projekt’s own reports, more than half of the company’s developers were already working on The Witcher 4. With the total number of CD Projekt employees exceeding 1 000, this is clearly more than the 400 people by mid-2024 that Badowski is talking about.

As a reminder, Polaris is a new trilogy of The Witcher, which, along with the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, is being developed by CD Projekt RED itself, unlike other projects that were entrusted to new CD Projekt studios. It is expected that the first game of the new trilogy will appear no earlier than 2026-2027, meaning that CD Projekt will not have any major releases for the next few years.

As for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, the Orion project, it is in the conceptual phase, Badowski says. Michał Nowakowski, another CEO of CD Projekt, expects that by the end of 2024, about 80 people will be working on the project. The company is considering the possibility of including multiplayer elements in the game, but is not ready to discuss details yet.

Besides, CD Projekt has formed a team that explores how AI can be used in development.

“We think that AI is something that can help improve certain processes in game production, but not replace people,” Michal Nowakowski said.

Speaking about the lessons learned during the release of Cyberpunk 2077, Badowski said that the company now has better control over the game’s production process.

“We believe that in the future we’ll avoid a premiere like the one we faced with Cyberpunk 2077”, Badowski said.