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.

However, while CD Projekt RED joint CEO Michał Nowakowski says it’s an “inspiration,” it won’t influence the studio’s direction. “There was a lot of inspiration in what Baldur’s Gate 3 did, but I think we’re still sticking to what was in Witcher 3, Cyberpunk. But we don’t want to just make another game like that, just with better graphics. We do want to innovate,” he told PC Gamer.

In case there’s any confusion, Nowakowski said CD Projekt RED is “definitely” not going to “make a game like Larian did.” That being said, there are some lessons to glean from it. “That’s the kind of game they can make. But a lot of stuff with how they can interact with the world and what it does was, for sure, some inspiration to us.”

While it’s best known for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, both massive open worlds laden with in-depth side quests and memorable characters, the studio has dabbled in other genres. Look no further than Gwent and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, both different takes on the card-battling mini-game.

However, at “some point,” says Nowakowski, a decision was made to focus on “the key pillar games rather than doing spin-offs.” “Maybe that’s going to change, but at the moment, the way we are structured right now, we don’t necessarily want to walk away from that.”

CD Projekt RED’s next title is probably The Witcher 4, which stars Ciri as the protagonist, but it won’t launch before 2027 at the earliest. Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, Project Orion, is likely further out as it entered the pre-production phase last May. Nowakowski even noted that it could take four to five years to develop.

Regarding his role as a lore consultant on Cyberpunk 2077, Pondsmith talked about being “involved in that process all the way,” which meant helping the team avoid getting things “completely wrong.”

“Because I was involved in it, what it meant was I could get my input into it and we could adapt and get it closer to what we wanted.” That includes the aesthetic on the weapons, which went from “silver, blaster-like” guns to “big, nasty, black, scary things which occasionally have little lights on them that watch you like eyes, but they are not science fiction. They are brutal things from where we are that have been basically kicked up two or three notches.”

When explaining this to the Krakow studio, he noted that “everybody listened” and immediately began creating things corresponding to his vision. “People had asked me the entire time, ‘What do you think?’ In fact, that still goes on now.”

Which brings us to the part about Project Orion. “A good portion of the trip I’ve just taken out here to CD Projekt, people have been showing me what they’re doing. They’re showing me what’s going to be happening in the new iteration of the game. They’re showing me what’s happening with, you know, some of the TV or radio or whatever stuff. And they ask me all the time. So it means that we stay in the same space, and we see the same outcomes.”

The “TV or radio or whatever stuff” could mean multiple things, from radio stations and commercials to full-fledged broadcasts. Cyberpunk 2077 utilized these mediums to immerse players in Night City, creating a hyper-capitalist dystopia, which still stands out to this day.

With the next Cyberpunk seemingly taking place in a new city, which Pondsmith described as “Chicago gone wrong,” we could see a shift in how its media is portrayed. Of course, the wait for anything concrete continues, but it could also mean the return of Johnny Silverhand, if the creator has his way.

Pondsmith’s enthusiasm arrives after weeks of chatter about whether Reeves might reprise Silverhand following the character’s arc in Cyberpunk 2077. The narrative puzzle is non-trivial given the game’s multiple endings. However, Pondsmith may have indirectly hinted that there are lore-friendly paths to make it work, especially in a universe built on engrams, Braindances, and ghosts in the machine.

“Not that long ago, I saw that Keanu would like to find a way to come back from the dead and play Johnny again. I have ways to do that, Keanu, contact me,” he said.

The big creative question is how far to push fan favorites in a story that’s likely to shift cities, cast, and tech (Unreal Engine 5) while preserving the franchise’s tech noir heart. A limited-scope return through archival memories, AI constructs, or targeted story beats could satisfy fans without forcing a single “canon” ending onto the sequel.

Bottom line: If the next Cyberpunk brings back Johnny, expect him to be a narrative catalyst, not a crutch, an engram that sparks new choices rather than a celebrity who crowds them out. The real test won’t be who shows up, but whether Night City’s successor still lets players write their own legend.

“CD Projekt RED is currently seeking a Lead Network Engineer to join our team working on Cyberpunk 2, the next mainline Cyberpunk 2077 game,” wrote the company in describing the position. “As a Lead Network Engineer, you and your team will play a pivotal role in designing and implementing the network architecture and online systems. You will lead and manage a team of talented engineers, working collaboratively to ensure seamless and robust online systems.”

Among the responsibilities of the Lead Network Engineer to ensure that players get low-latency and high-performance online experiences, which would also indicate some sort of real-time multiplayer game mode. There are also mentions of matchmaking systems, latency, bandwidth usage and server performance. These multiplayer features might not be silo-ed off into a separate mode either, with another responsibility being to integrate network features with other gameplay aspects.

The fact that the job listing is relatively new would also indicate that the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel is still fairly early in development. The studio had announced just last month that the team working on the sequel, as well as the team working on The Witcher 4, have been steadily growing. In an H1 report, CD Projekt RED noted that Cyberpunk 2’s development team had grown from 96 as of April 30 to 116 as of July 31.

“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.”

While the development of Cyberpunk 2 has been an open secret, CD Projekt RED itself has noted that the game won’t necessarily be called that. Rather, PR manager Ola Sondej said that the name was to indicate that it would be a new release in the franchise. For some additional context, the sequel is internally referred to as Project Orion.

As for what we can expect from the game when it finally comes out, senior writer and coordinator at CD Projekt RED, Magda Zych, noted that it doesn’t even necessarily have to take place in Night City. She noted that these types of stories could take place anywhere, since its anti-capitalist themes are fairly universal.

Hermanowicz notes that Unreal Engine 5.6 offers plenty of new features for the developers at CD Projekt RED to play around with for The Witcher 4 – and possibly even future games – thanks to “a lot of cool things that allow for fast iteration and moving forward.”

He also noted that, thanks to these new tools, the studio has a faster turnaround for whenever it is working on its other games. Hermanowicz said that “the more tailored, the more appropriate for our type of game the pipelines are and the technology is, the easier it is to make the game.”

“We have multiple projects in flight now. [Cyberpunk 2077 sequel] Orion moved to pre-production.”

“The development of those things and those improvements for open-world technology go across all those projects and benefit all of those projects,” Hermanowicz further explained. “So in a sense, we are now using The Witcher 4, and all the assets which are for this technical demo, which is a vehicle to push the tech forward, in return benefits all of the industry.”

Earlier this month, Hermanowicz also spoke about how CD Projekt RED has been looking at one of the densest locations from The Witcher 3 – Novigrad – to help it develop the denser towns in the upcoming The Witcher 4. “We actually looked at what we did in the past, what was cool about that, and what we couldn’t do at the time,” he said. “We actually looked at what we did in the past, what was cool about that, and what we couldn’t do at the time.”

When it comes to The Witcher 4, CD Projekt RED has been quite excited about the project since it released the tech demo showcase during the Unreal Engine event.

“Here’s the very first look at the tech powering The Witcher 4, developed by our team in collaboration with Epic, in buttery smooth 4K/60fps,” wrote the studio’s global community director Marcin Momot on social media. “This game is shaping up to be something special and we can’t wait to show you more when the time is right!”

The senior technical animator working on The Witcher 4 – Julius Girbig – has also spoken about the new tools available to him thanks to Unreal Engine 5.6, exclaiming that these tools have allowed him work on creating and refining “hundreds of characters” without having to dig into the code.

“It just unlocks me as an artist,” said Girbirg. “Now, with this engine, it suddenly unlocks me to create much bigger things and think bigger. It’s really, really awesome to be able to use things like the nanite foliage to create these vast forests and whatever comes to your mind, and it will be available for everyone.”

The Witcher 4 is in development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

“In all that we’re doing, we’ve learned that we have to be razor-sharp, focused. We cannot do so many things we would love to do, that we are tempted to do. We tried, and it didn’t work out.” As a result, it needs “to focus on what we are good at and really put 100% into it.”

As a result, Joint CEO Adam Badowski noted, the studio opted to develop multiple projects. “That’s why we switched from a single project company to a multiple project company. But everything is in our strategy.”

“We’re gonna develop AAA RPG, open-world narrative-driven games, and this is our – let’s say – niche. So the focus is there.”

While it sounds simple in practice, Iwiński highlighted how challenging it can be, especially when other developers are working on cool things.

“When you’re growing, it’s hard because there are all these temptations, and these people are doing this stuff online, and it’s so cool, and we love to play it, and – you think, ‘Okay, no, let’s take a deep breath and come back to what we’re doing,’ because if we spread ourselves too thin, we’ll not deliver.”

CD Projekt RED recently announced that Project Orion has entered the pre-production phase, and based on the developer’s past projects, it may take four to five years to finish. Of course, the Cyberpunk 2 name stood out, but PR manager Ola Sondej clarified that it means “another game” in the universe rather than the official title.

The Witcher 4 is also in development, and though it received a cinematic trailer at The Game Awards 2024, a release date, platforms, and gameplay have yet to be announced.