Cyberpunk 2077’s development has officially ended as The Witcher 4 Polaris moves into production

A new earnings report from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt makers CD Projekt Red has revealed that the follow-up to the sorceress-courting, Nekker-thwacking, horse-reassuring RPG is currently being worked on by around 400 people, and plans to move into the production phase by the “second half of the year.” Elsewhere, the report shows that the studio’s previous RPG, Cyberpunk 2077 officially ended all development at the end of April, at which time the remaining 17 staff still tweaking that game’s ray-traced chewing gum foil moved on to the Witcher 4 , or ‘Polaris’, as they keep insisting it's called.

Here’s a little graphy-graph below. I’m sorry I just wrote that. I was trying to make the graph sound fun. It’s on the page now. There’s nothing I can do about it.

An investors call was also made recently, in which joint CEO Piotr Karwowski spoke about the company’s market strategy going forward. "I would actually not look at Cyberpunk as the guidebook of how it's going to be with The Witcher specifically," Karwowski said. He added that CD Projekt won’t go full steam ahead on marketing until something “actionable,” is available, such as preorders, via PC Gamer. You can come back to this article and call me a big doofus in a few years time if I’m wrong, but I have to assume CD Projekt won’t make the same mistake twice, especially when it comes to golden greyboy Geralt.

If you fancy reading some of the best words on both Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion this side of those nifty gaps in Keanu Reeves’ beard I promise I’ve never tried to replicate while shaving, our Graham has you covered. He reviewed both the original release and its chunky expac, and also wrote about that expac’s heartbreaking ending - a genuinely moving bit of storytelling that contained the sort of subtlety and reserve you may not have previously assumed the game was capable of, say I.

My own contribution to the conversation that I’m sure everyone else has noticed by now but I’ve never read anywhere else is this: Did anyone else notice how the Grimes performance at Phantom Liberty’s party scene perfectly mirrors Songbird’s story arc? It does! It’s all there, told in expressive dance and lasers. Go watch it on YouTube if you missed it, assuming you still care enough about Cyberpunk easter eggs and/or Nic Reuben conjecture.