Witcher 3 Getting Next-Gen Release Later This Year
CD Projekt Red announced as part of their future roadmap that they’re working on a version of The Witcher 3, to be released later this year. Not only will the developers launch it on next-gen consoles, but they’ll also release an update for it for those with last-gen games.
According to an announcement from CD Projekt Red: “Developed to take advantage of the most powerful gaming hardware, the next-gen edition of the game will feature a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times — across the base game, both expansions, and all extra content.” The game will be released as a standalone game for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and everyone who owns the game for PS4 and Xbox One will get a free upgrade.
The underlying news with more long-term implications is that CD Projekt Red is switching up their game development cycle in an initiative it calls “Red 2.0”. It’s not hard to see this as a response to Cyberpunk 2077’s disaster of a launch, which it’s just starting to rectify with the release of a major patch. There are hints that CDPR is working on Witcher 4, or at least the next entry in the franchise. At any rate, we know it’s trying to expand the franchise into other avenues.
Among other changes, CDPR is shelving plans for a Cyberpunk multiplayer component. It’s still focusing primarily on Cyberpunk and Witcher content, and it remains a single-player developer, apparently. It’s shifting from sequential game development to parallel development, meaning it’ll have more than one game cooking at any one time. There are apparently plans for further mobile development. Perhaps most importantly, the presentation addressed, somewhat obliquely, the crunch problem that was so controversial behind the scenes of Cyberpunk, by saying the studio promised to, “emphasize the well-being of our employees.”
Source: CD Projekt Red