CD Projekt RED has announced that they’re dropping their PC-centric development strategy in favor of a console-first one for The Witcher 4.
This is due to botched release of Cyberpunk 2077 on last-generation consoles. Their goal is to deliver a smooth 60 FPS on current-gen consoles, though it won’t be that easy to achieve on Xbox Series S.
The State of Unreal 2025 presentation of The Witcher 4 was surely an impressive one. The game’s tech demo ran at 60 FPS on the base PlayStation 5, with ray-tracing enabled, showing off Unreal Engine 5.6’s capabilities, such as Nanite Foliage used for detailed vegetation rendering. The game looked beautiful and lifelike, with NPCs doing their own thing and a lot of stuff happening in the background without any interaction from the player whatsoever.
However, the plan to ensure the said 60 FPS on current-gen consoles is not without its hurdles. CD Projekt RED’s Vice President of Technology, Charles Tremblay, admitted that this is going to be a bit of a problem on Xbox Series S due to hardware limitations and Microsoft’s policy that games are to be released on both Xbox Series X and S. This is why developers are usually compelled to optimize their games for the less powerful console.
Still, the studio is committed to ensuring a high-quality experience across all platforms, with the focus on consoles. As far as The Witcher 4 is concerned, there’s no official release date yet. However, there are estimates that the game might launch sometime in 2027 the earliest, as confirmed by CD Projekt RED’s CFO, Piotr Nielubowicz.