CD Projekt Red is shifting a “big part” of its Cyberpunk 2077 team to The Witcher 4 (officially known as Polaris) once the Phantom Liberty Expansion launches in September.
Speaking during CD Projekt’s latest earnings call, president and CEO Adam Kiciński said the company is shifting more and more resources to the next Witcher game with a big development boost happening when main development on Phantom Liberty is complete. There are currently “250ish” developers working on Polaris, while even more are working on the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.
“After releasing Phantom Liberty we’ll transfer a big part of the team to Polaris,” Kiciński said. “Some remaining members will then focus on supporting other ongoing projects like Orion or Hadar but bear in mind we’ll also be supporting Phantom Liberty for some time.
“And across the company but including Phantom Liberty we’re at the same time parting ways with some team members. It’s a gradual process which will end in Q1 next year.”
Kiciński therefore made clear that not every developer working on Phantom Liberty will immediately shift over to the next Witcher game, though as CD Projekt Red’s development breakdown (above) shows, it’s likely most of the developer’s staff will be working on Polaris soon. Official numbers won’t arrive until the third quarter financial update on November 28, however.
As for the other projects mentioned, Orion is the full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 while Hadar is a brand new IP being developed at CD Projekt Red. Both of these games are still years away, as either Polaris or Sirius (the Molasses Flood-developed Witcher game) are expected to release first, in 2025 at the earliest.
Phantom Liberty launches on September 26 and will see a ton of new story content added to Cyberpunk 2077 alongside several gameplay changes. Vehicular combat, a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners inspired cyberpsychosis feature, and a clever nod to The Witcher are coming too, though at the cost of upping the game’s PC requirements.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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