Next Witcher Game Dev Team Now Over 400 People
Peter Donnell / 8 months ago
CD Projekt RED has had a lot of success and a lot of problems in recent years, but I think it’s fair to say they’ve redeemed themselves nicely, with Cyberpunk 2077 going from bad to iconic, but not without a significant amount of effort after the games launch. There and now 627 developers at CD Projekt Red working on various projects. However, during their financial year 2023 earnings call, they revealed that 403 of them are now dedicated to working on Project Polaris, which we also know is actually The Witcher 4.
CD Projekt Red
To put that into perspective, there are now just 17 people working on Cyberpunk 2077 updates, and the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel currently named Project Orion has a team of 47 people working on it, but it’s still early days for that title.
“You should not be expecting just a Witcher 3 in new clothing”
In the call, joint CEO of CD Projekt Red Michał Nowakowski was asked about the release date for The Witcher 4, going on to say “Revealing the release date is basically part of the marketing plan and that’s not something we’re willing to do here,” but, we expected as much anyway.
However, he did want to talk about innovation and upcoming games, He said “Making [a] new game is always a creative risk, especially since we’re trying to push new boundaries and explore new fields, do something we haven’t actually done before.” later adding “Basically, I guess what I’m saying is you should not be expecting just a Witcher 3 in new clothing. I mean, of course we’re building on the shoulders of what was done before and on the learnings of what was done before, but we will be adding new things, new elements, new gameplay elements, new mechanics that you have not seen in our previous games so far.”
The Witcher 4
That’s exactly what we want to hear, as much as I loved The Witcher 3, I tried to play it when the remaster was released but was surprised by how clunky the game actually felt, and the less we say about the performance on high-end hardware, the better. However, I think CD Projekt Red has what it takes to strike it rich again, and The Witcher 4, or whatever they call it, is certainly to be one of the biggest releases in the coming year or two.
