CD Projekt Red, the publisher-developer of The Witcher and Cyberpunk, plans to increase the cadence of its upcoming major game releases. This means we could see a quicker turnaround time for the projects the Poland-based studio is working on.
This came off the company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, May 28, where it talked about its strategy to make upcoming release schedules “less lumpy.” CDPR joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said the company, now with studios across Europe and the U.S., is working on several projects simultaneously.
Until now, CDPR’s flagship games have had a four to five-year launch cadence: The Witcher in 2007, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, and Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020. The last two, however, had arguably full game-sized expansions lined up following the launch of the base games.
“We already worked on two projects at the same time when we worked on [Cyberpunk 2077 DLC] Phantom Liberty because that was a game-sized project with almost 300 people working on it, and at the same time we have already been working on Polaris, so we’ve had an experience of working on more than one project,” Nowakowski said, drawing focus on the large expansion CDPR went through following Witcher 3 success.
As illustrated in the handy graphic in the earnings report presentation, the CDPR joint CEO doubled down on the company’s current efficiency with various projects. “We are working on more than one project at this time as well,” Nowakowski said. “There is Cyberpunk 2 being developed in Boston, there is Polaris being developed predominantly here in Europe, and obviously we have other projects, with other teams like Project Sirius, also in Boston with The Molasses Flood.”
“And there is The Witcher 1 remake done in cooperation with Canis Majoris, so you can definitely expect us to release more titles and the cadence of launches is something we definitely plan to increase, although I will obviously not comment on what is the space between the projects time wise.”
For the uninitiated, Polaris will be the first entry into a new Witcher trilogy. Project Sirius is a Witcher spin-off aimed at a “much broader audience” with both single-player and multiplayer elements.
Polaris, which for all intents and purposes can be called The Witcher 4, has by far the largest number of devs (407) from the company working on it. The next biggest project in this regard is the Cyberpunk sequel codenamed Orion.
Other projects in CDPR’s pipeline include The Witcher 1 Remake and the studio’s first original IP, Project Hadvar.
Although we haven’t seen any promotional material on any of the games CD Projekt has in development, it seems to have stemmed from the company’s wisening up from Cyberpunk 2077’s drawn-out marketing campaign.
On a related note, CD Projekt also refused to comment on a rumor that we might see a Witcher 4 teaser in June this year, potentially in the Summer Game Fest: “We don’t comment on speculation, doesn’t matter whether it’s regarding the timing or who’s working or not working on any possible, potential teasers or trailers.”
