Having entered full production in late 2024, it’s interesting to see The Witcher 4’s development team continuing to grow. By comparison, the team working on Project Orion aka Cyberpunk 2 has added approximately 14 developers over the past several months. It’s worth remembering, however, that CDPR previously outlined plans to more than double the size of the Boston, Warsaw, and Vancouver teams.

The plan is for Cyberpunk 2 to have more than 450 developers by 2027. As The Witcher 4’s development is showcasing, however, that could mean full production begins either later this year or early next year (it entered pre-production in May 2025). The development team will then continue scaling throughout until it hits the intended target, and nothing says it can’t increase even further.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a launch date or platforms, outside of PC, obviously. Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski believes it could arrive in late 2027 with the rumored Witcher 3 DLC – now believed to be coming in September – serving to bridge the story.

Creative director Igor Sarzyński didn’t affirm one way or another, but he definitely prefers the “uninterrupted immersion” that the current game offers. “Stumbled upon some old pics I shot during Phantom Liberty development,” he said on Bluesky. “Gotta admit, setting up cutscenes in this game would be extremely pleasant (because everything looks mindblowingly amazing), but in the end I value our uninterrupted immersion more.”

That immersion is due to Cyberpunk 2077 being almost entirely in first-person as players embody V through their journey in Night City. Third-person cutscenes are a rare occurrence, but you’re otherwise witnessing everything through your character’s eyes. So while Sarzyński isn’t necessarily denying a third-person perspective for Cyberpunk 2, it certainly looks unlikely.

If you needed anymore evidence that he’s factoring it in alongside cutscenes here, he responded to another user who claimed that the current presentation “limits interest from people who enjoy third person.” “When something is for everyone, then it’s for no one. It’s okay to not vibe with our choices!”

Back in 2023, quest director Paweł Sasko said the team hadn’t decided whether the sequel would be first-person. Cut to 2025, when a job listing for senior gameplay animator indicated that it would be first-person after all. With pre-production starting last May and CD Projekt RED planning to scale up its teams over the next two years, players may be looking at another highly immersive experience. With potentially sporadic glimpses of their created character, of course.

Chrzanowski has noted that the actual development price is likely closer to PLN 1.4 billion (roughly $388 million). He also expects CD Projekt to spend a similar amount on its marketing, which will likely bring up its overall expenses to the $800 million mark. He has also offered predictions about the development budget of other CD Projekt titles, such as the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel Project Orion.

He has predicted that Orion‘s development will cost around PLN 1.5 billion (roughly $416 million), with a chunk associated with the rumoured multiplayer game modes. Along with this, the launch window for Orion has also been reportedly pushed back to Q4 2030.

Chrzanowski had previously reaffirmed that the DLC for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is “100 percent” happening. He cites the company’s incentive program being short PLN 700 million (roughly $194 million), which may be met if new paid content for one of CD Projekt’s games is released.

As for the rumours about new The Witcher 3 DLC, Chrzanowski predicts that it will be released in May, and will sell 11 million copies over the next year. He has also predicted a development budget of PLN 52 million (roughly $14.5 million) for this DLC.

While CD Projekt RED is yet to make any DLC announcements, reports have indicated that it will take players to Zerrikania, east of Nilfgaard. Along with this, IGN Poland has also claimed to have known about the DLC for “a very long time”. It is worth noting that these details about the DLC are from early in its development, and that they may have been changed since then. Kovir is noted as another possible location for its story.

Development of The Witcher 4 has been going quietly at CD Projekt RED, with no new details having been revealed in quite some time. Back in December, however, CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski had spoken about the company’s hiring policies, and whether it has been changed because of the rise of generative AI in the IT industry.

“We are not really hiring ‘classic’ IT – but I understand this is supposed to be about gaming industry talent – the availability of talent has perhaps increased a bit over the past three years, but I’m not sure I’d actually ascribe it to AI, to be perfectly honest – some studios have been going through turmoil; there were some project closures and so on, which led to many redundancies in the gaming industry; we’ve all seen that – it’s been very dramatic in many cases – but – literally kill me here, but I don’t recall a single time when it would be attributable directly to AI,” he explained.

He also noted that the company isn’t looking to reduce its headcount due to generative AI anytime soon. Rather, the company’s use of AI largely revolves around “productivity areas”, and he isn’t convinced that the technology can “sit down and make games”.

“That’s our take. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be useful, but it’s not gonna be making The Witcher 5, or 6, or anything like that,” he said.

Granted, that’s only three more than it reported as of July 31st, but it makes sense since full production began almost a year ago. The developer has grown overall this past quarter, going from 799 to 851 developers with Cyberpunk 2, also known as Project Orion, gaining 21 more team members. Other projects like The Molasses Flood’s Project Sirius and new IP Project Hadar saw comparatively minor increases to their teams.

However, it’s interesting to note CD Projekt RED’s plans to scale its Boston, Warsaw and Vancouver teams for the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. From October 2025 and well into 2027, it plans to more than double the former’s size to over 300 developers. The latter two teams will also go from fewer than 100 to well over 150, meaning over 450 developers will be working on the title in about two years.

While The Witcher 4 won’t launch before 2027 “at the earliest,” this presents a timeline for when CD Projekt RED may start winding down production and gradually shifting team members to Cyberpunk 2. That’s if everything goes according to plan, and with a project aiming to be the “most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game,” there may be some hiccups.

“Our recruitment efforts have significantly sped up over the last three months and as a result the total number of talented developers working across our projects has grown by 10% reaching almost 800 people,” said joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski in a presentation to investors. “This growth was primarily driven by our two largest development teams.”

“The Witcher 4 team grew to over 440 developers while the Cyberpunk 2 project which transitioned into pre-production recently in Q2 as you may remember added 20 new team members. We anticipate further gradual growth in our total developer headcount by the end of the year, particularly for the teams working on projects in the most advanced stages of production.”

Of the two projects, The Witcher 4 is quite a bit further along in development than the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, as evidenced by the fact that the team for the former is much larger than the latter, as well as the fact that The Witcher 4 was officially unveiled back in December 2024 with a trailer.

Since then, CD Projekt RED has been revealing more details about the action RPG. Back in July, narrative director Philipp Weber spoke about how much pressure the team has been facing to make The Witcher 4 better than its critically-acclaimed and beloved predecessor.

According to Weber, “‘Witcher 3 was one of the best games ever made, how are they going to top it?’” he went on to mention that he agrees with discourse surrounding the 2015 RPG, saying “I’m like ‘yeah, how are we going to do that?’”

“I think the way we want to do justice to the legacy of The Witcher 3 is to take the philosophy we had during The Witcher 3 – how to make a game, how to really care about these things, how to tell stories – and keep that philosophy,” Weber continued. “At the same time, there are new questions we want to answer, because this is supposed to feel like a true sequel, not just redoing what we did before. And I think it’s really trying to have that healthy mix of really moving forward and also trying out some new things, but doing justice to what was there, not trying to beat it.”

The Witcher 4 doesn’t yet have an official release date. The title is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and is making use of the most cutting edge technology available for Unreal Engine 5 out there.

Sondej’s statement comes shortly after the company confirmed that it has entered the pre-production phase for Cyberpunk 2 – known internally as Project Orion. The announcement was made during a recent earnings report, where the studio also noted that Cyberpunk 2 wasn’t the finalised name for the game.

While pre-production on the game may have started already, we might still be between 4 and 5 years away from seeing the actual game. During the same investor call, studio co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said that CD Projekt RED’s development pipeline usually takes games around 5 years to go from pre-production to final release date.

“Our journey from the pre-production to the final release date takes four to five years on average,” said Nowakowski when asked about whether the studio’s current development pipeline for The Witcher 4 is also an indicator for what we can expect for a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. “Having said that, and keeping in mind that each project is unique and there are many variables that influence the final outcome, I will not lead you into specific years.”

Project Orion was announced has having entered the earliest stages of development back in February 2024, with Gabriel Amatangelo – who last worked on Cyberpunk 2077’s expansion Phantom Liberty – serving as the game’s director. Other developers working on the game include Dan Hernberg as executive producer, Ryan Barnard as design director, and Alan Villani as engineering director. All three are veterans of the game development industry, with Hernberg having served at Blizzard, Barnard at Ubisoft Massive and IO Interactive, and Villani at WB Games.

While details about Project Orion – or Cyberpunk 2 – might still be sprase, back in 2022, studio CFO Piotr Nielubowicz spoke about how many developers the game might need. In an investor call at the time, Nielubowicz said that the studio can take cues from Cyberpunk 2077’s development team, and that the new game might need between 350 and 500 developers.

“As for the total headcount required for such a production, I believe the best reference is Cyberpunk 2077, our most recent release and a good reference point when thinking about development headcount and future projects of this scale,” he said at the time. “I think it’s safe to assume that between 350 and 500 developers should be required.”

Development on Project Orion is being handled primarily by CD Projekt RED’s North American studio, with support coming in from teams working in Boston, Vancouver, and Poland.

Creator Mike Pondsmith has also said that Cyberpunk 2 would take place in a new city, which he has described as being less like the Blade Runner-inspired Night City and more like a “Chicago gone wrong.” Pondsmith has also said that Night City will still be present in the game in some form.

Interestingly, the sequel was referred to as Cyberpunk 2 in CD Projekt Group’s Q1 2025 earnings report. Whether this is a more direct name for the project for investors or the official name going forward is unknown. Regardless, with creator Mike Pondsmith confirming a new city that feels like “Chicago gone wrong,” it isn’t impossible to imagine it being called Cyberpunk 2080.

The date is significant because Night Corp created a maglev connection that allowed for travel from Night City to Chicago in the official series timeline. It’s still unknown whether players will travel to the latter, but Pondsmith did reveal that Night City would return in the sequel.

Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime. CD Projekt RED is currently working to bring Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition to Nintendo Switch 2 on June 5th. It contains the base game and Phantom Liberty, the latter selling 10 million units to date.

An ad for the position of senior gameplay animator was recently posted by CD Projekt RED on LinkedIn. Under qualifications, it lists, among other things, “an animation reel demonstrating immersive 1st person view model animation.” It suggests that Cyberpunk 2 (or whatever it ends up titled) will also be a first-person game, or at the very least partially first-person.

With Cyberpunk 2077 and its expansion, Phantom Liberty, CDPR firmly established a framework and identity for the franchise, so it’s not surprising that it’s sticking with the same. Whether we could expect a third-person option in the game remains to be seen, but a first-person Cyberpunk sequel is far from surprising.

The next Cyberpunk game is currently in the early stages of development at CDPR’s new Boston studio, led by veteran Cyberpunk 2077 developers. Another recent job listing suggested that the game aims for “the most realistic and reactive crowd system in any game to date.” Read more on that through here.

Members of the game’s own development team are, in fact, in agreement with that notion to some degree, and say they want to bring about noticeable improvements on that front with Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel, which is currently in early pre-production at CD Projekt RED’s newly-established North American wing.

Speaking in a recent episode of CDPR’s AnswerRed Podcast, associate game director Paweł Sasko touched on how Cyberpunk 2077 “didn’t push the envelope far enough” with its social commentary as it could have given its social commentary, citing the example of “the homeless crisis.”

“I see that we didn’t push the envelope far enough in some places, for instance,” he said (transcription via IGN). “Like, let’s say, the homeless crisis. When I look at it, I’m like, ‘We weren’t far enough in ‘[Cyberpunk 2077].’ We thought that we were dystopian, but we just touched the surface.”

Project Orion executive producer Dan Hernberg chimed in, remarking on how the cyberpunk setting allows CD Projekt RED to draw parallels with the real world, and how the next Cyberpunk is going to continue “exploring those themes but in a very poignant way.”

“I think the really cool thing about Cyberpunk—and the dystopian future that it has—is there’s so much relevance to today, of megacorporations, of people on the fringes, you know, of people just being exploited resources, of the wealth gap, of all these things,” he said. “I think that 2077 allowed us to tell these stories in ways where—at the heart of it—there’s always relationships and people, but we’re in a really broken world and that we can call out some of these things.

“I think for me that’s what Cyberpunk is about, exploring those themes but in a very poignant way. I love the world, and I think that’s what we’re going to try to do with Project Orion. Really continue to lean into that and continue to say, ‘What is [the state of the world ] today, and what does it look like in a couple of years?'”

In October last year, CD Projekt announced that Cyberpunk 2 was in the “conceptual design” stage. The next big project that the company is focused on is The Witcher 4, which will enter full production soon.

In November, it was revealed that the game was in the “conceptual design” stage of production, and though it will remain in those early stages for a while yet, things will continue to ramp up nonetheless. Speaking recently with Reuters, CD Projekt CD Projekt CEO Adam Badowski said that the sequel, codenamed Orion, will have around 80 people working on it by the end of this year. Interestingly, co-CEO Michal Nowakowski also said that CDPR was considering multiplayer elements for the sequel, but did not go into further details.

CD Projekt first began development on a standalone Cyberpunk multiplayer experience back in 2019, but reports emerged in 2021 that the project had been cancelled, with the studio confirming later that it had chosen to focus its efforts on fixing and improving the base game after its tough launch, which meant multiplayer had to be shelved. Nonetheless, CDPR has said that multiplayer elements will be introduced to both Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises in the future.

It’s been previously confirmed that Cyberpunk 2 will be directed by Gabe Amatangelo, who led the charge on Cyberpunk 2077’s turnaround, and also directed its acclaimed expansion, Phantom Liberty. The game will be developed by CD Projekt RED’s newly-established wing of North American studios, which will also include several core members of the first game’s development team. At full strength, the game is expected to have 350-500 people working on it, though presumably, it will be a while before it gets to that stage.