New releases
After the stormy release of Cyberpunk 2077, which led to a class action lawsuit against the company and arguably led to the worst moment in its history, CD Projekt Red has announced that they are currently working on four new games!
Orion, Polaris, Canis Majoris, Sirius, and Hadar. In addition to a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, and three games based on the Witcher series, the Polish company has also announced that it is working on a brand new IP. It’s the sunshine after the storm or something like that, so they say, right?
In a recent video and social media posts, CD Red announced what is being called its “Group Strategy Update”, which includes four titles with codenames based on stars and constellations. |On more general updates, the company told that they are beginning to work with partners for the first time on the Witcher games.
Also, Witcher 3 will come to the next-gen this year and the major expansion for Cyberpunk 2077,Phantom Liberty, will come to next-gen consoles (only) in 2023.
Okay, but what’s all that astronomic babble about?
Orion
According to the company, Orion is going to be Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.
According to the video announcement, it will “fully unleash” the potential of that universe. The project will have support from a new studio based in Boston.
Polaris
Polaris is the next installment in the Witcher franchise. In this new phase, CD Projekt is planning on a brand new Witcher trilogy, and Polaris is its starting point.
The Polish company says the new trilogy will release over six years and both second and third games will “benefit from the groundwork laid during the development of Polaris” in technological terms.
Canis Majoris
This Witcher-based game will be created by a third-party studio and seems to be an open-world RPG.
As the company says, tech-wise, it will use Unreal Engine 5 and the toolset created for Polaris.
Sirius
The Molasses Flood game is set in the Witcher universe and is being created with support from CD PROJEKT RED developers.
It will be different from past releases aiming at the general audience. “Along with the single-player experience gamers will be able to play with others, as Sirius will contain multiplayer”, says the company.
Hadar
This is the good stuff. Not that the others aren’t… Well. You get it. Hadar is an entirely distinct IP and probably another RPG-genre based. Early production of this game started in 2021 and it is not in the development phase just yet.
This kind of announcement is a bold move and not a very common one. Maybe a new category of announcement: bundle announcements. When was the last time you saw a developer announce four major releases at once? In a way, it is even an indication of how the company is repositioning itself, after the failure to launch CB was felt in the company’s wallet. The announcement is part of a new CD Projekt, which seems to be more concerned with gap-free communication (such as limiting the embargo on reviews of the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 to the day of release).
