The Long Wait For The Witcher 4 Won't Be All Cons

The Witcher 4 could very well slide into the next console generation, according to a recent investors' call by CD Projekt Red. The hotly anticipated follow-up to 2015's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a game that many consider among the best of all time, has quite a lot of eyes on it for obvious reasons, and the hype train hit full steam following an intriguing 2024 Game Awards trailer.

But that hype may need to be tempered a bit, as CDPR claims that The Witcher 4 won't be coming until 2027 at the earliest. In the aforementioned investors' call, the developer stated that it does "not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026," indicating that the project is still a few years away from release. And a 2027 release date isn't confirmed, either: the company could very well choose to bump The Witcher 4 down the line even further in an effort to avoid another Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco. That is, CD Projekt Red no doubt wants to steer clear of another rushed, highly publicized, disastrous launch. This could mean that The Witcher 4 won't be landing during this console generation at all, which might not be a bad thing.

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By Josh Cotts

A Next-Gen Release Date for The Witcher 4 Could Be a Blessing

The Witcher 4 Could Look and Run Better Than Anticipated

The Witcher 3 was already a fantastic game in 2015: it was stunning, artfully rendered, and mechanically deep. But its 2022 next-gen upgrade arguably perfected it, adding ray-tracing, higher FPS targets on console, better VFX, and a number of additional performance and graphical tweaks. Now, in 2025, The Witcher 3 can compete with even the most cutting-edge AAA games when it comes to visual fidelity, and it runs silky-smooth.

It's not exactly a reach to assume that The Witcher 4 will be more visually and technically complex than its older sibling at launch, and pushing the title back a few years could further help it in this regard. Putting the game on the PlayStation 6, Switch 2, and whatever platform Xbox plans to release in the coming years, could let it be unshackled from the constraints of the current-gen, of which there are a disappointingly high number. As for the PC version of the game, launching in 2027 or later would make higher hardware requirements easier to swallow, as more advanced computer specs will theoretically be more commonplace. In short, The Witcher 4 could look, run, and feel better on the next console generation, perhaps growing into a definitive early title for the next chapter in gaming tech.

Cooking The Witcher 4 All the Way Through Would Be a Smart Move

Gaming audiences aren't forgetting about what happened with Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, and it's likely that CDPR isn't forgetting either. The studio suffered a massive blow to its reputation, spent north of $120 million to fix the shoddy game, and was even on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit. This barrage of misfortune could have been avoided by leaving Cyberpunk 2077 in the oven a bit longer, and while CD Projekt Red can't change the past, it can learn from it, allowing it to inform the future.

The Witcher 4 can't just launch in a decent state: it has to be just about perfect. All eyes are going to be on the game as the next flagship title from an infamous developer, and it will be CDPR's chance to prove that Cyberpunk 2077's release was a fluke, not the norm. More time spent on the game, and better hardware on which to release it, would make it stunning and technically airtight, which is exactly what the company needs.