Today, developer CD Projekt Red lifted the lid on its upcoming projects, including one codenamed Orion. This, the company has said, will be the “next Cyberpunk game” and it will take the “Cyberpunk franchise further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe.” There’s no mention here of the company’s long-in-the-works Cyberpunk multiplayer project, which it has been tinkering away on for years and previously described as a “triple-A” release. However, today’s flurry of announcements included word CD Projekt was introducing multiplayer to “most of our new games to enrich the single-player experience”. Perhaps this multiplayer project has morphed into the Cyberpunk sequel? In addition to this news, the developer also laid out further plans for its next Witcher series. This will include a new trilogy of games that will begin with a project codenamed “Polaris”, and will be released over a six-year period. The company also has a project currently known as “Canis Majoris” (which will be developed by a third party studio) on the go. This will be a fully-fledged Witcher game, but one that is separate from the aforementioned trilogy of games. Thirdly for the Witcher franchise, the studio revealed a project codenamed “Sirius” that is being helmed by Molasses Flood. Sirius will include a multiplayer element on top of a single player experience that will include “a campaign with quests and a story”. As for the long-awaited current-gen console update for The Witcher 3, there’s no new detail on when that will arrive - though it is currently still set for this year. Lastly, a brand-new IP codenamed “Hadar” is also in the pipeline, but for now details on this are all under wraps. CD Projekt Red states this game is still in the “earliest stages of the creative process”, and therefore development on it has not yet started. The company did share that it will be an “entirely distinct IP”, that will be “created from scratch” within CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk 2077 has seen quite the renaissance of late, something that has been attributed to the well received Netflix anime Edgerunners. This weekend, stats shared by Valve showed that Cyberpunk 2077 was the fourth most popular game on Steam Deck by total hours played, topped only by Stardew Valley, Elden Ring, and Vampire Survivors - in that order.
