As part of their latest stratey update, CD Projekt Red has announced that ‘Project Orion’ will be a full Cyberpunk 2077.
Per the presentation, the game “will prove the full power and potential of the Cyberpunk universe.” Though it is merely noted that it is “to be developed by CD Projekt Red team.” When other games in the presentation – which you can see in full here – were given more specifics about being in pre-production, and the like.
The cyberpunk 2077 sequel will not be developed by the main CDPR team in Poland, but rather by CD Projetk Red North America, a new studio that’s combingin their existing team in Vancouver with a new location in Boston. Work won’t begin until next year, after the release of the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty.
Project Orion is one of three projects planned within CDPR. Alongside it is Project Polaris, the next The Witcher game that will kick off a new trilogy within the popular fantasy universe, and Project Hadar, a new IP that has been in “incubation” since 2021. There’s also external partnerships for an additional The Witcher game, Project Canis Majoris, which is being made by a third party studio led by ex The Witcher developers.
The confirmation of an intended Cyberpunk 2077 sequel makes sense, given how the game has recovered in recent months. The game’s launch was a bit of an omnishambles, but still raced to over 13 million sales before the state of the game was truly understood. Having been significantly updated with native PS5 and Xbox Series X|S upgrades back in February 2022, with the fresh announcement of the Phantom Liberty DLC for next year, and the Cyberpunk Edgerunners Netflix show, the game has had a resurgence in interest. It has now passed 20 million copies sold, and daily player counts are at their highest point since launch.
Still, Cyberpunk 2077 should be a cautionary tale for the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. The game was announced in 2012, a first cinematic teaser in 2013, and it wasn’t until 2018 that we had the first proper cinematic trailer. Gameplay debuted at E3 2019, but it was then repeatedly delayed through 2020 up until its eventual, fateful launch. Even then, it was a bit of a mess.
Big games like this take an awfully long time to make – see Bethesda with Starfield and The Elder Scolls 6 – and we’ve also seen countless examples of newly founded studios with massive ambitions then taking a significant amount of time to scale up to meet that task. Don’t expect the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel to be coming out for a long time.
Source: CDPR
