The Witcher 4 Pre-Production is almost over

Michał Nowakowski, Co-CEO of CD PROJEKT, stated:

"Work on Polaris (The Witcher 4) is progressing – the development team is approaching an important milestone which marks the end of the pre-production phase. The first half of the year was also a busy period for our Boston studio, which is laying the foundations for Project Orion – a new game in the Cyberpunk universe."

The Witcher 4 will soon enter the production phase with 410 active developers, according to the latest infographics. CD PROJEKT as a whole has gained nine new employees in the period from April to the end of July, with three additional developers working on Polaris, four on Orion (the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077), three on Sirius (the rebooted multiplayer The Witcher spin-off that developed at Molasses Flood).

The number of employees on Project Hadar (a secret new IP) remains at 20, while three more developers work on shared services across all projects, such as AI, localization, quality assurance, etc. Finally, only eight developers have been assigned to other projects, which is a decrease from twelve in April.

CD PROJEKT also commented on the recent launch of the REDkit for The Witcher 3. Nowakowski stated:

"It's been several months now since our development tools were released to players, and there are already a number of interesting modding projects out there. We're happy to see the engagement of the gaming community, which is eager to share its ideas and bring new strength to The Witcher 3 – a game celebrating its 10th anniversary next year.”

The financial results of the Polish company are very positive. Their net profit (170 million in local currency, which is about 44 million dollars) exceeded the comparable period by almost 90%. CFO Piotr Nielubowicz also stated:

"In the first half of 2024, we also noted an increase in our financial reserves. Despite paying out almost PLN 100 million in dividends and setting aside over PLN 150 million for new projects, our reserves still grew by more than PLN 55 million."

There's no release date for The Witcher 4 yet, but with the game's triple-A ambitions, it's easy to imagine at least two, if not three years of production. The game could therefore be launched between the end of 2026 and 2027.