“I was in a conversation with a person who started a studio and was telling me: ‘I’m running a primarily AI-based studio. I can have 40 prototypes within a week, two weeks from now I can have five games that I chose are going to be the best, and three weeks from now, I’m actually launching a game.’” Nowakowski went on to note that he still had doubts about whether this concept would even work out.

“Maybe that’s going to be successful, but I have some doubts whether this is really the path to follow.”

Nowakowski had last spoken about the use of generative AI in game development during an earnings report from back in December 2025. At the time, he said that the studio had no plans to hire more ‘classic’ IT people to integrate generative AI tools in its development pipelines.

“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 then went on to note that the studio was using AI tools in “productivity areas”, and while he didn’t explain what it meant, he noted that these tools aren’t capable of handling the creative aspects of game development.

“At least I don’t know about that. And as for reducing headcount thanks to AI – I don’t imagine that. Our usage of AI is mainly in the productivity areas, and that’s where we see the largest benefits of that. The benefits are real, they’re meaningful, but it’s not a situation – and I’m unaware of such a situation – where AI could ‘sit down and make games,’ he said. “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.”

There have been quite a few recent conversations about the use of generative AI. Palworld developer Pocketpair’s head of communications and publishing, John Buckley, said that the company doesn’t plan on using these tools because “gamers don’t want it.” On the other hand, Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that generative AI was used in the earlier processes of the development of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.

It’s considered one of the best role-playing games out there today, especially after Phantom Liberty. However, despite changing how it develops titles (including properly documenting everything), steps to eliminate crunch, and more, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski believes its redemption arc hasn’t been completed.

“I’m not 100 percent convinced we went through the full redemption arc,” he told the Knowledge newsletter (via GamesRadar). “I’m convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that’s a fair thing.”

Of course, the company isn’t simply taking it lying down. Nowakowski hopes that “we will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next.” Which would potentially be Cyberpunk 2, if not The Witcher Remake from Fool’s Theory.

Regardless, it’s a long journey, especially since CD Projekt isn’t keen on releasing a swath of titles. In the same interview, Nowakowski said that he’s not keen on a big game every year, and the team isn’t planning to grow by having several new IPs. Instead, the plan is to make “really cool games” – with the odd expansion such as, say, Songs of the Past for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

As for The Witcher 4, it doesn’t have a release date, but chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz said that it wouldn’t launch before 2027 at the earliest.

In a recent financial earnings call, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski revealed that “the expansion is now in an advanced phase of production. Around 190 developers, most of them from our trusted partners at Fool’s Theory, are currently working with us on the project. At the same time, CD Projekt RED provides the creative oversight to safeguard the quality of the Witcher experience.”

How many developers from CDPR are involved remains unknown, but as of April 30th, 2026, there are 163 developers currently working on Project Orion aka Cyberpunk 2. Project Sirius, a multiplayer Witcher spin-off developed by The Molasses Flood, is next up at 83 developers, while Project Hadar has dropped from 26 to 24.

The Witcher 4 continues to command the lion’s share of resources with 513 developers currently, up from 499 in February. With CD Projekt RED’s focus split between its two core projects, it’s understandable that Fool’s Theory is handling the bulk of the expansion. Whether it’s affecting development on The Witcher Remake is a different question altogether.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, with a reveal confirmed for Gamescom. However, you should expect something akin to a guided demo rather than hands-on time, per Nowakowski.

When asked if expansions for the new Witcher trilogy were possible, given the company’s “very ambitious project pipeline,” he replied, “As you mentioned in the question, the plans are pretty ambitious. Specifically, it’s to release three Witcher games within a six-year period. It would be difficult, to be very honest, for us to add an expansion to the upcoming trilogy. This is where we are here and now with this particular issue.”

In case you missed it, CD Projekt has been adamant that after The Witcher 4’s launch, The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 would arrive afterwards in a span of six years. So assuming Ciri’s first solo adventure launches in 2027, that would mean the next chapter could debut in 2030, followed by the saga’s potential conclusion in 2033.

Now, you could say that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt received its first expansion, Hearts of Stone, in October 2015, just a few months after the base game, followed by Blood and Wine in May 2016. However, keep in mind that Cyberpunk 2077, a brand new title, launched over five years later (development troubles aside).

If the company wants the same level of quality from The Witcher 5 and 6, if not higher, given the progression of the story, it makes sense to focus all their resources on the same. The possibility of expansions for any of these games isn’t exactly zero, if Songs of the Past arriving more than 11 years after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt wasn’t enough indication, but for now, CD Projekt RED has bigger priorities.

It started with the complete lack of documentation for The Witcher 1 and 2, and, surprise, “nothing from that period” exists.

“We were tasked to recreate the classic game for the mainstream audience, only to realize that we had little to no technical knowledge preserved from that time,” said Ruciński, referring to the upcoming remake from Fool’s Theory. With Cyberpunk 2077, the team opted for a “fresh start” and utilised Confluence, a “living documentation tool.”

Unfortunately, what started with the best intentions turned into over 8,000 pages of barely useful material (and maintaining it was, unsurprisingly, a “low priority”). Things became even worse when Phantom Liberty shifted to a “cloud instance of Confluence” for its documentation.

As Fulneczek notes, “It was chaos, right? Two spaces, two instances. It was very difficult to understand for us, for our outsource partners as well… If you can, don’t divide between platforms or different tools. You have to link very clearly between them.”

Thankfully, CD Projekt RED has overhauled its documentation process. Referring to The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, Fulneczek said, “The future looks really promising for us. We learned our lesson.”

“We’ve got some new requirements, especially a new definition of ‘done’. So as you know, any project, any game goes through development stages, and right now, every stage ends with a gate. Part of the requirements to pass that gate is the documentation, which wasn’t the case before.”

Ruciński added, “Unlike in the past, now, today our knowledge isn’t locked between specific teams’ permissions. It’s a shared asset. If a team working on, let’s say, The Witcher figures out a solution for a specific issue, the Cyberpunk team can see it, benefit from it, take it into their own code, modify it probably a little bit.” This means that “problems aren’t being solved multiple times by different teams, and also that if a breakthrough happens on one of the projects, the whole company benefits.”

While this is all well and good, the fact that CD Projekt RED shipped some of the biggest games out there despite this messy approach says something. It also makes one excited about what a properly organised development team can deliver in the future, that too without severely burning out its workers.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release date, though it entered full production in late November 2024. As for Cyberpunk 2, it was last noted to be in the pre-production phase as of May 2025. Teams for both have been scaling up, however, so it wouldn’t be surprising if there were new announcements this year.

After having spent 8 years at Warhorse Studios working on both Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its sequel, Glatz has now taken on the role of senior open world designer at CD Projekt RED. During his tenure at Warhorse, he had worked as a senior game designer and writer, and a lead level designer.

Interestingly, Glatz’s new role is similar to one that was mentioned back in December 2025 among a list of roles that CD Projekt RED had been hiring for. Other roles included Game Capture Lead, Lead VFX Artist, and Senior VFX Artist, among many others.

Since then, the studio hasn’t slowed down its efforts to hire new developers. In February, former cinematic animator on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Lucie Hennet, joined CD Projekt RED’s Warsaw-based studio, which is working on The Witcher 4.

“During my time at Sandfall Interactive, my main responsibilities included cleaning up and refining body and facial motion capture, as well as managing data from Xsense to UE5,” wrote Hennet about her qualifications. “I also provided support on the motion capture sessions and contributed to building the animation pipeline for the cinematics.”

December 2025 also saw Felix Pedulla jump over to CD Projekt RED from Larian after having worked at the Baldur’s Gate 3 developer as its senior cinematic designer. Pedulla is an industry veteran, and in the past has also worked at Crytek, having a hand in the creation of cinematics for titles that include Hunt: Showdown.

“After an incredible and frankly wild six-year ride with the amazing team at Larian Studios, a new chapter begins,” wrote Pedulla. “I’m so grateful for every chaotic, creative, and unforgettable moment we shared. We made some serious magic together, and I’ll forever cherish the lessons and memories. A huge thank you to all my incredible colleagues and friends I made.”

“As one adventure ends, another begins! I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’m joining the legendary team at CD Projekt Red as a Senior Cinematic Designer! The opportunity to contribute to one of the most ambitious studios in the industry is a dream come true. Time to trade in my Baldur’s Gate dice for some Polish steel and get to work crafting some epic cutscenes.”

In the meantime, CD Projekt RED has continued to quietly work on its variety of projects. While it hasn’t yet confirmed a release date for The Witcher 4, co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has reaffirmed that there are plans to release the game, along with two sequels, within the span of six years.

“I do believe that further games should be delivered in a shorter period of time – as we had stated before, our plan still is to launch the whole trilogy within a six-year period, so yes, that would mean we would plan to have a shorter development time between The Witcher 4 and The Witcher 5, between The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 and so on,” he said on the subject of development times for CD Projekt’s games getting “shorter and more predictable” in their cadence.

In its full GDC 2026 session outlining the future of Path Tracing, Nvidia’s Martin Stich talked about how one non-gameplay scene (based on assets provided by CD Projekt RED) featured 60 million plants and one million trees across a 5×5 km terrain. Despite featuring 200 different plant species and some trees having more than 10 million polygons, it loads without any streaming.

All of this is complete with fully path-tracing lighting. Perhaps the most impressive part of all this is that it runs at 4K/80 FPS, but there are some caveats. It’s running on an RTX 5090, and the 4K resolution is upscaled from 1440p with DLSS Quality mode. Comparatively, an RTX 4070 would eke out 58 frames at 1440p (upscaled from 960p).

As noted previously, none of this represents the actual gameplay or the hardware you’ll need to run The Witcher 4 on PC. At this point, it’s a cool tech demo of what RTX Mega Geometry is capable of using the game’s assets. Whether it reaches this level of fidelity and complexity remains to be seen, so stay tuned.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t currently have a launch date, though there are claims of a late 2027 launch. Officially, it’s still in full production with CD Projekt RED recently scaling up its team (among others) for the same.

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.

Hennet showcased some of her work during her tenure at Sandfall Interactive—which lasted from May 2023 to the end of 2024—through a showcase reel on ArtStation. It features plenty of motion capture footage for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Hennet was responsible for converting the raw motion capture footage into a cleaner version, which could then be further refined for the full game.

“During my time at Sandfall Interactive, my main responsibilities included cleaning up and refining body and facial motion capture, as well as managing data from Xsens to UE5,” wrote Hennet on ArtStation. “I also provided support on the motion capture sessions and contributed to building the animation pipeline for the cinematics.”

Development on The Witcher 4 has seemingly been going slow and steady, with CD Projekt RED also focusing on growing its team. Interestingly, December saw the studio add another cinematics-focused artist to its ranks—former Baldur’s Gate 3 senior cinematic artist Felix Pedulla.

“After an incredible and frankly wild six-year ride with the amazing team at Larian Studios, a new chapter begins,” wrote Pedulla on LinkedIn. “I’m so grateful for every chaotic, creative, and unforgettable moment we shared. We made some serious magic together, and I’ll forever cherish the lessons and memories. A huge thank you to all my incredible colleagues and friends I made.”

“As one adventure ends, another begins! I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’m joining the legendary team at CD Projekt Red as a Senior Cinematic Designer! The opportunity to contribute to one of the most ambitious studios in the industry is a dream come true. Time to trade in my Baldur’s Gate dice for some Polish steel and get to work crafting some epic cutscenes.”

While few details about The Witcher 4 have been released in recent months, Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski has predicted that, when all is said and done, more than $800 million will have been spent on the RPG. In his analysis, while Chrzanowski noted that the development itself will likely end up costing CD Projekt around $388 million, marketing and other expenses will add on quite a bit, bringing the overall expenses to beyond the $800 million mark.

Rumors and reports by analysts have also indicated that, as the work on The Witcher 4 continues, CD Projekt RED has plans to bridge the gap between the upcoming RPG and its predecessor by releasing a new DLC for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This DLC is expected to be priced at $30, and will likely end up being the start of a proper marketing push for The Witcher 4.

For more, check out what CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has to say about the role of generative AI in game development.

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.