The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt RED is switching from PC-first to console-first development. 

Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt developer CD Projekt RED recently opened up to Digital Foundry about the recent Unreal Engine 5 tech demo for its next game: The Witcher 4. The developer noted that while it has focused on PC performance in the past, it is now focusing on “more console-first development" for The Witcher 4. 

The developer now intends to achieve 60fps on PlayStation 5 with the sequel. 

The Witcher 4 features “console-first development”

Game developer CD Projekt RED spoke to Digital Foundry about the recently-released Unreal Engine 5 tech demo for The Witcher 4, detailing the company’s shift away from its in-house REDengine. In the interview, the developer confirmed that it had chosen to move to Unreal Engine 5 for future game development out of necessity, as its current strategy involves developing multiple projects simultaneously, inclusive of multiplayer experiences. 

The developer also spoke about something that made headlines upon the tech demo’s release: the demo was played on base PlayStation 5, and ran at a nigh-flawless 60fps framerate. The developer noted that previously, it would “always do PC, we push and then we try to scale down. But we had so many problems in the past that we wanted to do a console-first development. We saw it would be challenging to realise that ambition on PS5 at 60fps, which is why we started to figure out what needs to be done with the tech. We have all our other projects at 60fps, and we really wanted to aim for 60fps rather than going back to 30fps.”

The “many problems in the past” that the developer is referencing here might be related to Cyberpunk 2077’s infamously messy launch, which had some PC players commenting on its impressive in-game performance while console players were plagued with crashes, bugs, and other technical woes. 

It also noted that the demo was meant to “showcase that 60fps on a base console is achieveable with all the features that we have,” but “this is a tech demo; the whole gameplay loop isn't implemented, there's no combat and there's a lot of things that don't work. But still, the ambition is set. It's too early to say if we'll nail it, but we'll work as hard as we can to make it, for sure.”

However, that doesn’t mean that CD Projekt RED intends to ignore PCs entirely. The developer wants to “start with the PS5 as the base” as it is “easier to scale up than down [...] we're CDPR, we always want to push PCs to the limit.” 

The developer added that “the company started as a PC company, and we want to have the best experience for the PC gamer. But it's too early to say what it'll mean for The Witcher 4.”

The Witcher 4 does not have a release date, but we do know that it won’t launch before 2027.