The Witcher 4 Development Cannot Move Forward If a Console Version Fails Technical Checks

CD PROJEKT RED has fundamentally changed how it is developing The Witcher 4, introducing strict technical checkpoints that prevent production from moving forward when the game fails to meet required standards on any target platform. The new process is designed to avoid repeating the problems that surrounded Cyberpunk 2077, where development prioritized the PC version before the studio faced major difficulties adapting the finished experience to console hardware. CD PROJEKT RED Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski confirmed to Game Developer that The Witcher 4 can already be launched internally on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X during active development.

"You come to the studio, you launch Witcher 4 right now. You can launch it on PC. You can launch it on PS5."
— Quote by: Michał Nowakowski, Joint CEO of CD PROJEKT RED.

The wording that development is "halted" does not mean production of The Witcher 4 has been suspended. Instead, individual development milestones cannot progress normally when one platform fails the technical requirements established for that stage. Nowakowski explained that a milestone might require 10 technical checkmarks. In the past, CD PROJEKT RED could allow 1 or 2 missing requirements to carry into later milestones with the expectation that the team would resolve them afterward. The problem was that unresolved requirements could accumulate until developers were dealing with 4 or 5 missing targets several milestones later, making the technical debt considerably more difficult to solve.

The Witcher 4 now follows a much stricter process. If a feature or system creates a problem on one platform, the team addresses the issue before allowing that portion of development to continue. This means console performance is being considered throughout production instead of becoming an optimization challenge close to release. The strategy expands on the new production rules CD PROJEKT RED previously introduced for The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, which established stronger milestone gates, documentation requirements and a stricter definition of when development work can actually be considered complete.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the obvious reason for the change. Nowakowski explained that its development was heavily focused on PC, where CD PROJEKT RED pushed for maximum visual quality under the assumption that scaling the experience down for consoles would be manageable. That assumption ultimately proved incorrect, particularly on older console hardware. Cyberpunk 2077 launched in December 2020 with severe technical problems on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, eventually resulting in Sony temporarily removing the game from the PlayStation Store. CD PROJEKT RED spent years rebuilding the game through extensive updates before its eventual recovery.

The studio is taking almost the opposite approach with The Witcher 4. Its technology is being developed alongside Epic Games using Unreal Engine 5, with console performance forming part of the project from an early stage. CD PROJEKT RED demonstrated this philosophy during its official Unreal Engine 5 technology presentation, where an early demonstration of the world of Kovir ran on a standard PlayStation 5 at 60 FPS. The presentation showcased Nanite Foliage, FastGeo Streaming, the Unreal Animation Framework, MetaHuman technology, Mass AI crowd scaling and other technologies intended to support large open world environments while maintaining performance.

That demonstration was not gameplay from the finished game, and CD PROJEKT RED emphasized that considerable development remained. However, designing the technology around console limitations from the beginning gives the studio substantially more time to identify CPU, GPU, memory and streaming bottlenecks before they become deeply integrated into the final game. For an ambitious open world RPG where dense vegetation, crowds, animation, streaming and complex world simulation all compete for hardware resources, solving those problems early could prove critical.

The Witcher 4 is currently CD PROJEKT RED's largest production, with more than 500 developers assigned to the project. The game begins a new Witcher saga with Ciri as its protagonist and represents the studio's first mainline Witcher RPG developed using Unreal Engine instead of its proprietary REDengine.

Stopping milestone progression because one platform misses a technical target might sound restrictive, but this is exactly the type of discipline CD PROJEKT RED needed after Cyberpunk 2077. Performance problems become exponentially harder to solve when developers continue building new systems on top of unresolved technical debt.

The more important change is that consoles are no longer an optimization problem waiting at the end of development. The Witcher 4 is being built with PC and console performance evaluated throughout production, which should make its final scalability considerably stronger.

It does not guarantee a flawless launch. The Witcher 4 is still an extremely ambitious open world RPG built around rapidly evolving Unreal Engine 5 technology. But if CD PROJEKT RED genuinely refuses to move past milestones until every target platform meets its requirements, the studio is applying one of the clearest lessons possible from Cyberpunk 2077.

Does CD PROJEKT RED's stricter platform testing make you more confident about The Witcher 4, or will you wait until launch before trusting its performance?