CDPR tweeted its long-term development plan for the Cyberpunk sequel via Twitter just hours ago. It says that it plans on taking the franchise “further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe” with Project Orion. Beyond the tweet, nothing else was mentioned. In conjunction, Adam Kiciński, the studio’s President and other CEO, said that the sequel would be an ambitious title and to that end, the company would be expanding its already burgeoning studio of 1200 people even further, starting with a new hub in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. On another note, the announcement also ran parallel to another tweet by Marcin Iwiński, the co-founder and joint CEO of CDPR. As of today, Iwiński says that he stepping down from the latter role and enter into the role of Chairman of the Supervisory Board, which is a non-executive role. Iwiński says that this will allow him to “remain active and engaged” and to help the company whenever and wherever necessary. Cyberpunk 2077 launched back in 2020 after multiple delays. Sadly and as we all know, the game itself became a contentious issue both inside and outside the realm of gaming; gamers were frustrated with just how marred the game was with bugs, glitches, and other performance issues. Seriously, its performance was so bad on both the PS4 and Xbox One, Sony actually pulled the game from the PlayStation Store shelves entirely. Mercifully, though, CDPR did take the initiative to refund disgruntled gamers through its own “Help Me Refund” program, costing them US$2.17 million (~RM10 million) out of the total US$51 million (~RM236.3 million) loss it suffered.
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 4, 2022 Outside the realm of gaming, Cyberpunk 2077’s hot mess found itself under the spotlight of Poland’s watchdogs. For context, CDPR as a studio had become something of national pride for Poland, after its last title, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, shone the light on a studio that, at the time, was not part of a major studio or developer in the US or within Western Europe. So, when the game garnered negative criticism and reviews, it was only natural that the country would want to punish the studio, just as it had praised them before.
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 4, 2022 Aside from Cyberpunk 2077 and Project Orion, Kiciński also announced in a separate YouTube video that the next three titles in the pipeline would be games based in the Witcher franchise. Codenamed Polaris, each of the titles will also have their own codenames: Canis Majoris, Sirius, and Hadar. Canis Majoris is described as a full-fledged Witcher game, separate from the original saga; Sirius will reportedly have a multiplayer element as an add on to its single-player experience; while Hadar will be an entirely new game “created from scratch”. (Source: CPDR via Twitter [1] [2], YouTube, Polygon)
