Cyberpunk 2 sequel Project Orion entering development soon, dev team to double across next year

CD Projekt executives confirm that Cyberpunk 2077's incoming sequel, Project Orion, will enter development phases soon.

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Project Orion, aka the new Cyberpunk sequel, is moving from the R&D research and development phase into pre-production development. The game had previously entered R&D earlier this year.

"Moreover, as I mentioned with Orion, we are close to moving from the research phase to the development phase in IFRS terms, so this part of the expenditures that was so far booked in our P&L will soon become treated as development expenses and presented as capitalized in our balance sheet," CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said in a recent Q&A with investors.

Like all future titles, Orion will be built in Unreal Engine 5 and will have multiplayer elements, the company has said. As we reported in 2016, Cyberpunk 2077 was originally supposed to have online multiplayer.

"Orion is a codename for our next Cyberpunk game, which will take the Cyberpunk franchise further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe," the studio said on Twitter in October 2022.

"Project Orion is a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel that will prove the full power and potential of the Cyberpunk universe."

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Elsewhere in the Q&A, CD Projekt joint-CEO Michal Nowakowski confirmed that the company plans to double its headcount for Orion across the next year or so. There are currently 60 people working on the project.

Q: When should we expect your development team to start growing more visibly?

A: So in general terms, the biggest part of the team is working on Polaris right now and in this respect we feel the team is kind of complete. Probably it will grow a bit, but we believe we have the force, we have all or absolutely most of the people that are required for the project in this part of our activity.

We do not expect a significant increase.

At the same time, Sirius and Orion, probably with Orion first and foremost, we expect future growth also next year. And Orion that was presented on one of the slides right now, is around 60 people, and we believe over the course of next year it should probably double the headcount.

Sirius will also grow but probably not that dynamically.

And on the other projects, we also keep growing, however as some of them are made together with external partners, the headcount on our side is limited.