In October 2022, CD Projekt Red announced not one new project, but four. All given secretive codenames like "Project Hadar," "Project Canis," and "Project Sirius," these games are all in extremely early stages of development, and CD Projekt Red has only revealed a handful of details about each one. Two of the three just mentioned are games based in The Witcher universe, with one being the start of a new mainline trilogy and the other being a multiplayer-focused Witcher title. Project Hadar is a brand new IP, and the last project announced, Project Orion, will be a fully-fledged sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.
With CD Projekt Red having its hands well and truly full, it's had to expand its operations quite significantly, resulting in the opening of a Boston studio named CD Projekt Red North America. It's this studio that will lead the development of Project Orion. But even with a dedicated studio working solely on Project Orion, it's unlikely that fans will see the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel anytime soon.
Fans May Be Waiting A While For the Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel Project Orion
Cyberpunk 2077 took an infamously long time to actually hit store shelves. CD Projekt Red initially announced Cyberpunk 2077 all the way back in 2012, long before even The Witcher 3 saw the light of day. According to some sources, proper development on the game didn't start until 2016, following The Witcher 3's final expansion. In the years following its initial announcement, Cyberpunk 2077 became one of the most infamous video game developments around, going practically radio silent for five whole years.
Cyberpunk 2077 was eventually teased again in 2018, and in the following year, the game was given its first slated release date. Of course, Cyberpunk 2077 would miss its initial April 2020 release date, and its September 2020 one, and its November 2020 one, finally launching in December 2020. It took eight years for Cyberpunk 2077 to come out, making it one of the longest AAA development cycles in all gaming history. But Project Orion may be able to beat that record.
When Project Orion was first announced back in October 2022, CD Projekt Red made it expressly clear that work had only just started on the project. Generally speaking, for an RPG of Cyberpunk's size, development can take anywhere between two and five years, and that's just a rough estimate. So, at the bare minimum, fans should be expecting a wait of about three years for Project Orion, but even that estimate is likely to be inaccurate.
CD Projekt Red has a total of five projects currently in development, including the aforementioned Witcher titles, a brand new IP, a Witcher remake, and Project Orion. During its announcements, CD Projekt Red stated that its Witcher projects were being prioritized over everything else, with The Witcher 4 likely being the first project to hit store shelves. According to some insider reports, The Witcher 4 began development back in 2021, but it still probably won't release until 2025 at the earliest. Then there's the rest of CD Projekt Red's Witcher projects, each of which are likely to release about a year apart from one another.
This already pushes Project Orion back to about 2028, and then there's Project Hadar, the completely new IP which doesn't yet have a date, but will likely disrupt these hypothetical release slates even further. While Project Orion is being worked on by its own dedicated studio, it seems likely that CD Projekt Red will want to focus on The Witcher franchise for at least the next few years, with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty acting as Cyberpunk's last hurrah for a while. If that is the case, then fans might not see a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel for quite some time.
Project Orion is in development.