The Witcher 4 development is forging ahead at CD Projekt Red

During CD Projekt Red’s FY 2023 earnings call today, we got a brief update on the development of The Witcher 4. According to CDPR development is forging ahead on the fourth installment in the franchise with over 400 developers now on the project. While not a big update, it does confirm that the process is well underway with that many developers now working on The Witcher 4 which is internally codenamed Polaris.

It’s important to note that despite the update, The Witcher 4 is still quite a ways away. Back in 2022 CDPR president and co-CEO Adam Kicinski confirmed that the title was at least three years away. While that could technically fit into a 2025 release window, that’s very unlikely based on the earnings call confirming The Witcher 4 was in pre-production. That means it’s mostly the conceptualization stage.

Alongside the update for The Witcher 4, CDPR also shared the number of developers on other ongoing projects which is very interesting. There are currently 17 developers still on Cyberpunk 2077, assumedly mostly bug fixes after the company confirmed the Phantom Liberty DLC would be its last. There are 47 developers currently working on Project Orion, which we know is whatever the next chapter in the Cyberpunk universe is.

There are also some developers currently working on two other confirmed projects at CDPR. There are 37 developers on Project Sirius, a known multiplayer title in the works. Also, there are currently 20 developers on Project Hadar which has been confirmed by CDPR as an all-new IP. Obviously, these smaller teams typically indicate the project is very early on in its development cycle, which is to be expected compared to the massive over 400 developer team working on The Witcher 4 now.

According to the breakdown, there are also 95 developers currently working on Shared Services including localization, quality assurance, data, insights, experiences, and AI. Another 8 developers are also working on “other projects”.