The next major project from The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red could become the biggest and most ambitious thing the studio has ever done.
That project is Cyberpunk 2077, a video game that studio head Adam Badowski believes needs to outshine The Witcher franchise by being "even better, even bigger, even more revolutionary" than what the developer originally planned for the title.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the studio's next action RPG, which finds inspiration from the Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game. Set in a dystopian future world in the fictional Night City, the game follows a society where technology has made the world more advanced, but at the cost of humanity's soul.
Speaking at a conference call regarding the company's earnings, Badowski pointed out that there is still a lot of time before the game's official launch, and that the developer continues to work on creating what will become "a truly outstanding game." He also promised that the size of the game is "much greater" than The Witcher series, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which featured over 100 hours of play time, and that doesn't even include play time hours from its expansion packs.
CD Projekt Red first announced Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2012, but it's likely that the game won't even see a release date until 2017, or possibly even later: the company announced a window from 2017-2021 for the title. The developer also hopes to improve on the success seen by The Witcher 3, as well as create something that is more ambitious than that.
In the meantime, CD Projekt Red plans on doubling its staff, not just for work on Cyberpunk 2077, but for other projects in the pipeline, including a mysterious previously-unannounced game mentioned during its earnings call. The company also has one more expansion pack planned for The Witcher 3, "Blood and Wine," which will probably arrive within the next few months. It is also still pushing sales for The Witcher 3, which originally released in 2015.
As of August 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt sold a respectable six million copies, with the game getting mentioned in a lot of "best of" year-end lists: it quickly became a critic and fan favorite.
