CD Projekt RED regularly updates the number of employees and their assignment to individual projects in the presentation of its results. That's how we know that Project Polaris grew to 403 people. This should interest us a lot, because it is hidden under the name Polaris a new installment in the Witcher serieswhich will run on Unreal Engine 5.
CD Projekt CEO Michał Nowakowski informed shareholders that everything is going according to plan. The Polaris team has reached the target size to enter the production phase, which is scheduled for the second half of this year. We will play the new Sorcerer in two years at the earliest.
Another important milestone for the Polish company is building a new studio in Boston. Some of the leading developers moved to it Cyberpunk 2077 and a successful story extension Phantom Liberty, to work on a new cyberpunk adventure. The sequel to Cyberpunk has a codename project Orion and 47 people are dedicated to it. This number should gradually increase, CD Projekt RED wants to work simultaneously on several large projects in the future.
By the way, in three years the cumulative sales of Cyberpunk exceeded three billion Polish zlotys (17.6 billion crowns). Cyberpunk 2077 and its expansions are already becoming a thing of the past. The team has shrunk to just 17 developers. Sirius, that is spin-off of The Witcher in The Molasses Flood team, has not changed since the previous update. There are less than 40 of them. And a mysterious new brand being developed under a working name the Hadar project has 20 people (is in concept stage) and other projects 8.
From the breakdown of the workforce, it's clear that the new Witcher is the most important thing for CD Projekt RED right now. It is still in development a remake of Geralt of Rivia's first adventure. They are in charge of it at the Fool's Theory studio, where they recently completed the story RPG The Thaumaturge. The remake will be released after the new Witcher.
In 2022, The Witcher spin-off ran into trouble. The studio was instructed to define a new framework for the project, taking into account the evaluation of the scope and commercial potential. Project Sirius was announced in October 2022. At the time, it was supposed to be in pre-production and was described as an innovative take on the world of The Witcher, not intended for fans of dark RPGs, but to a wider audience (for example, fans of the series The Witcher from Netflix) = players who have not yet had any experience with the virtual adventure in the world of Andrzej Sapkowski.