CD Projekt Red hopes to expand its development operations to a scale “not precedented in the history of our company.”
With work on Cyberpunk 2077 winding down following Phantom Liberty and more resources being shifted to The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red hopes to expand its development operations to a scale “not precedented in the history of our company.”
That’s according to CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, who discussed the studio’s goals during an earnings call earlier today. When asked how CDPR will distribute revenue after a year that has seen the company’s best-ever third quarter thanks to Phantom Liberty, Nielubowicz explained:
“We definitely want to continue with developing games and with investing into them. We want to do it at a scale that was not precedented in the history of our company, working on a few projects at the same time – something that we’ve never made at this scale, historically.”
This corresponds to the numerous upcoming CD Projekt Red games announced during a massive earnings call last year. The announcement included the establishment of a CDPR North American studio in Boston, which will shepherd the Cyberpunk franchise and become critical to the studio’s ambitions for parallel AAA development. To be clear, the two major parallel projects in question are the Project Orion sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 4 (Project Polaris until we get more than a working title).
However, CDPR has seen a number of layoffs this year, with management blaming the loss of 100 developers on overstaffing. Following a third round of layoffs, studio employees pushed to unionize in October.
CDPR CEO Adam Kiciski elaborated on the studio’s plans in response to a seperate question about company priorities in 2024. “Polaris is one of our top priorities,” he began. “But we have to bear in mind that we are in parallel development for some time, and that’s a strategy goal, to be able to develop AAA games [in parallel]. As Polaris is high priority, building the team in North America for Cyberpunk is the same priority.”
“We are also working on other projects besides video games within our franchises. We have nothing to announce at the moment but we’ve been working on this for quite a while and the time will come to share some insights about this.” This was quickly followed by an odd question about Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2, which made Kiciski laugh.
“And of course, The Molasses Flood will continue to develop Project Sirius with some direction,” The CEO went on to mention the externally developed, now-rebooted Witcher spinoff. “And [The Witcher remake] Canis Majoris, a very special project. We know the game very well because it’s The Witcher 1, but at the same time we want to remake it with all the new technology and designs that we are preparing for Polaris.”