The Witcher 4 'is nearing a major milestone' and will soon enter full production

CD Projekt's 2024 half-year financial report is out, and there's not a whole lot to see for anyone who isn't a major shareholder in the company. But there is one thing that's of interest to non-investing gamer types: The Witcher 4 is just about ready to move into full production.

«Work on Polaris is progressing,» CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said in a press release. «Its development team is nearing a major milestone which will mark the end of the preproduction phase.

»The first half of the year was also a busy period for our Boston studio, which is laying the groundwork for Project Orion—a new game set in the Cyberpunk universe."

«Polaris» is the codename for «a new saga in the Witcher franchise,» which CD Projekt insisted for an entire year was not called The Witcher 4—until then-CEO Adam Kiciński blabbed in March 2023 that, yes, Polaris is in fact The Witcher 4. 

Of course, that's not necessarily the official title for it, and CD Projekt has studiously avoided using that term for it in subsequent communications. But it has acknowledged that Polaris is «the next game in The Witcher saga,» and since there have been three previous games in the series, the next one is the fourth. You just can't deny the logic.

The breakdown of who's doing what at CD Projekt is virtually unchanged from the previous report—some small upticks in the Witcher spinoff (Sirius) and a new IP (Hadar), but nothing particularly notable—but chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz said in an earnings recap video that a lot has happened over the first half of 2024. 

«The Polaris team, working on the next game in The Witcher saga, made substantial progress, which will soon enable us to wrap up pre-production and take this project to the full production phase.

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»The past six months were also a busy time for our new studio in Boston. There, a group of CD Projekt veterans, now assisted by