The Witcher 4 is 'the largest' game in development at CD Projekt 'by the size of the team, but also by the progress of ongoing work'

CD Projekt says Polaris, the next game in the new Witcher trilogy—which we are calling The Witcher 4 until somebody makes us stop—is now the studio's biggest project, both in terms of the number of people working on it and how far along it's come.

«Over 400 people are currently working on the game,» chief financial officer Piotr Nielubocwicy said in a financial presentation, «and we plan to move on to the production phase in the second half of the year.» There's also a handy graph illustrating the breakdown: No, it's not a huge shift in numbers from the previous report and for now it remains in pre-production, but even so work on The Witcher 4 is obviously dominating CD Projekt's efforts.

It also fits with a statement made by joint CEO Adam Badowski in January, when he said CD Projekt would «like to have around 400 people working on [Polaris] by the middle of the year.» Given that number was hit by February, optimists might even say things are coming along a little bit ahead of schedule.

Alas, that progress doesn't mean we should expect to start seeing what the studio has in mind for the next big Witcher game anytime soon. Perhaps still smarting from the massive eight-year gap between the original announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 and its release, CD Projekt said in 2021 that it won't start marketing new games until they're much closer to launch, and it's apparently sticking to that plan.

«I would actually not look at Cyberpunk as the guidebook of how it's going to be with The Witcher specifically,» joint chief operating officer Piotr Karwowski said during today's investors call. Karwowski said it's possible CD Projekt will do things like «teaser trailers or informative trailers'' ahead of the marketing campaign, but the wheels won't start fully spinning on that until there's something „actionable,“ such as when preorders are available.

»Anything that's going to happen before is going to be more informative, it's going to be more PR oriented and so on, and that's