Witcher 4 could enter production this year, multiplayer being considered for Cyberpunk 2

CD Projekt has provided an update on the next mainline Witcher game and its Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

Joint CEO Adam Badowski told Reuters the company hopes to enter the production phase of The Witcher 4, which is codenamed Polaris, this year.

The company said in March 2022 that its next Witcher game would kick off “a new saga” for the franchise, which has sold over 75 million copies since launching in 2007.

It also revealed that the open-world title was being built with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, rather than its proprietary REDengine, which powered previous Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt confirmed last May that it had wrapped up its research phase on the game, which will be the first part of a new trilogy, and progressed to the pre-production phase.

It said last November that almost 330 developers were working on the project, making it CD Projekt’s biggest development team, having overtaken Cyberpunk’s.

“We’d like to have around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year”, Badowski told Reuters, which reports that analysts expect the game to be released in 2026 or 2027.

A Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, codenamed Project Orion, is currently in the “conceptual design” phase at CD Projekt’s North America studios.

Badowski said the company expects to have about 80 people working on the game by the end of the year.

Joint CEO Michal Nowakowski also said CD Projekt was considering including multiplayer elements in the sequel.

The company’s Cyberpunk 2077 follow-up was originally intended to be a standalone AAA Cyberpunk multiplayer game, but the project was scrapped following the original game’s troubled release.

“Given our new more systematic and agile approach, instead of primarily focusing on one big online experience or game, we are focusing on bringing online into all of our franchises one day,” former CEO Adam Kiciński, who is now serving as the company’s chief strategy officer, said in March 2021.

Nowakowski also said the company has established a team to explore the use of AI in development.

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

The company previously confirmed it had used AI to recreate the voice of a deceased actor.