In 2022, CD Projekt Red unveiled an ambitious lineup of projects, headlined by a new instalment in The Witcher series. The team working on the game has remained small over the past 18 months but now, with work on Cyberpunk 2077 completed, CD Projekt Red is in the process of ramping up production on its new Witcher title.

The yet-to-be-named Witcher game, internally referred to as “Polaris”, entered pre-production in 2022, with the development team laying the groundwork and adapting to the newly adopted Unreal Engine 5 toolset. Now, with work on Cyberpunk 2077 winding down, CD Projekt Red has reported to investors that it is juggling its teams around, with most of the remaining Cyberpunk developers now transitioning to other projects, growing the Polaris team considerably.

At this stage, Polaris is the main project at CDPR, with the majority of the studio's developers now working on it.

With all of that said, it is worth pumping the brakes a little before fans get too excited. While the team working on the project is growing, that does not mean it will be finished and ready within the next couple of years. CD Projekt Red will be mindful of prior criticism it received over the development and rushed launch of Cyberpunk 2077 and has promised to put an end to its internal ‘crunch' culture, a process in which developers are unfairly overworked in an effort to get a project out faster.

This time around, we are likely to see CD Projekt Red take a little longer with its next Witcher game, taking the time needed to test more thoroughly and squash bugs prior to release. There is no projected release date yet for the game, but we could be in for another four or five year wait.

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KitGuru Says: I've been replaying The Witcher 3 in recent weeks thanks to the next-gen update, so my love for this series is fresh on my mind at the moment. I'm incredibly excited to see a new Witcher game, even if it doesn't star Geralt, but it needs time and care to get it right. If CD Projekt Red repeats the mistakes it made leading up to Cyberpunk 2077, followed by a lengthy multi-year process of fixing the game, then the studio risks losing a lot of trust from not just its employees but fans as well. 

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