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CD Projekt RED barely talks about Witcher 4 development. After the official announcement, nothing much has been revealed. A recent interview reveals a strategic shift in the development of the game. The latest update states the game will come out on consoles first. Though it’s too early to come to any decision, it’s not good news for PC players.
The update states CD Projekt RED emphasizes PS5 and Xbox Series X/S optimization as a priority to meet the performance target. It indeed ensures a stable FPS rate on consoles but causes concern for PC gamers.
Last year, when CDPR announced Witcher 4, it created a mixed reaction among fans about changing the protagonist. However, the team was never vocal about the game’s details. Recently, this silence broke with a shocking update for PC gamers.
In a recent interview with Digital Foundry, CD Projekt RED's VP of technology, Charles Tremblay, opened up about the game’s quest design and other aspects. While talking about the technical issues that the team faced previously with the PC release, he mentioned, “...we had so many problems in the past that we tried to see, okay, this time around we really want to be more console-first development.”
Witcher games are renowned for being PC-specific games. Generally, these games were first made for PC and then scaled down to meet console requirements. For the upcoming one, CD Projekt RED is following a new strategy. Tremblay even mentioned the aim to reach 60 FPS on PS5 and the challenges they have been facing. Per him, “We worked with Unreal, and then we saw the challenge to realize the ambition that to make what we want at 60 fps on PS5, there would be work.”
The Unreal Engine 5 demo of the game is impressive. Whether it’s only for the console or not, it highlights the efforts the developer team put into it.
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This news, as expected, triggered backlash among PC gamers. A franchise that has long been made for PC gamers first suddenly changing its route is hard for them to digest. Players are worried that a console-first approach will ruin the PC version at launch.
CDPR has “super-high ambition for this project,” and the team reassured players that PC will remain the primary platform. This time, the team wants to do experiments, and the tech team is prioritizing console stability before going back to PC.
However, it’s not convincing enough for PC gamers. They suspect the required driver support and exclusive features will not be ready until months after the console launch.
CD Projekt RED’s console-first strategy marks a bold shift in the Witcher franchise’s history. A franchise that always makes PC players feel superior suddenly prioritizing console optimization is something shocking. CD Projekt RED promises a lot to PC gamers about visual qualities and customization. However, players are still anxious about the quality.
As of now, the game is rumored to come out sometime in 2026. Until then, there’s no way to know whether console players will get the stable 60 FPS performance for Witcher 4 or not.
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