The Witcher 4 now in fully production

It goes almost without saying that the popularity of The Witcher series was massively expanded upon the release of CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. With that massive increase in fan base, many still want more from this world, if not from the characters themselves. Between a Netflix show which was pissed away by a creative team playing with their own backsides, to games like Gwent and Thronebreaker, there is a number of ways to enjoy the world of Andrzej Sapkowski’s creation. Well, a little over two years ago it was announced by CD Projekt RED that the next game, “Project Polaris” was in pre-production.

According to a new financial report from CD Projekt posted yesterday, the studio is shifting further into production. The statement reads, “I’m proud to confirm that several weeks ago the Polaris team wrapped up preproduction and moved on to full-scale production – the most intensive phase of development,” said Michał Nowakowski, co-CEO of CD Projekt, the parent company of CD Projekt RED. Nowakowski goes on to say, “We are very pleased with our progress on this project, and I wish to thank the team for its dedication.“

In the full statement, there isn’t very much else about Polaris, or The Witcher 4 as most seem to be calling it. There are mentions of other projects, titled: Orion, Sirius, Canis Majoris, and Hadar, with a further anime project. Of course, we already know that Netflix is working on another Cyberpunk 2077 series following the success of Edgerunners, but other than this sole mention of an anime project, there is very little else said about it.

When speaking about the financials of Cyberpunk 2077, Nowakowski notes the title has now sold 30 million copies following the heavily criticized launch. With the release of the Phantom Liberty expansion last year and further sales, that’s 8 million (base game and Phantom Liberty conjoined) since last October. Nowakowski said, “These are impressive figures. I’m very happy to see a large, dedicated community coalesce around our Cyberpunk games. In the coming year the base game, along with its expansion, will be released to a new group of users: Owners of Mac devices powered by Apple Silicon chips.” So an Apple release of Cyberpunk 2077 is coming next year.

Despite this uptick in “strong sales” of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, the year-on-year revenue figures suggest a drop of 49%. Taking the yearly revenue from €102.7 million ($107.5 million) to €52.8 million ($55.2 million). Of which it is attributed that “An absence of a comparable event [game or DLC release] in the current period contributed to lower Sales of products on a year-on-year basis.” Without going too far into the financial report blow-by-blow, there are a few drops, but the development side has at least expanded the overall headcount. A rarity in the modern games development sphere it seems.

Hopefully, CD Projekt has learned from its mistakes with Cyberpunk 2077, with a disaster of a release and a hard year or two to fix and rebuild that reputation. Some have clearly lost faith in the publisher/developer entirely, and I can understand, but I’m hoping this can be a redemption. Especially as so many hold The Witcher series up as a paragon of the action-RPG genre.