Today CD Projekt Red delivered fresh financial results for the first half of 2023, which provided an interesting peek at what the Polish developer is working on now. It seems The Witcher “New Saga,” codenamed Polaris, is increasingly becoming the company’s main focus. Per CDPR, there are nearly 260 devs working on the next big thing in The Witcher franchise as of the end of July, making it their second-biggest project after Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty likely won’t be CDPR’s top project when the company’s next fiscal results are delivered, as CEO Adam Kicinski says a majority of the people working on the expansion will be transferred to The Witcher team once it ships in September.
Speaking of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the expansion has created a lot of renewed positive buzz for the game, so is it possible CDPR might decide continue on? Could we see another expansion? Per Kicinski, that’s just not going to happen for technical reasons (thanks to Video Games Chronicle for the following transcription).
“The decision has actually been made. As we have announced a long time ago, we’re not going to make a second or third expansion. This is the only expansion of the game, and it has nothing to do with the numbers and how satisfied or not we are with sales or anything of the kind.
It’s a technological decision to be honest. This is the last time we’re working on the Red Engine for the time being at least, and in the foreseeable future we are working on the Unreal Engine from Epic. This was one of the key reasons why we decided this was the only one.”
While CDPR isn’t going to make another Cyberpunk 2077 expansion after Phantom Liberty, a full sequel to the game, codenamed Project Orion, is in the works. Don’t expect that one for a while though, as it’s just in the planning stages (not enough devs are working on it for it to get a dedicated section in the chart featured above).
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty launches on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 on September 26.
