The Witcher 4 Is Already Running on Every Target Platform

CD Projekt Red says The Witcher 4 is already playable on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X during active development, a major shift in how the studio builds its biggest games after the problems that defined Cyberpunk 2077's launch.

Speaking in an interview, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said the studio now treats platform support as a core part of development from the start, instead of chasing the highest-end PC version first and adapting later. He said anyone visiting the studio today could launch The Witcher 4 on each target platform and see it running.

That marks a clear change from Cyberpunk 2077. Nowakowski said that project was developed with a PC-first mindset, driven by the goal of achieving the strongest visuals and a more cinematic presentation. He said the team believed scaling that work down to console hardware would not be especially difficult, and that assumption turned out to be wrong.

Nowakowski also pointed to The Witcher 3 as part of the studio's history with cross-platform development. He said CD Projekt Red had faced similar technical pressures before, but managed to get through them well enough that the team felt Cyberpunk 2077 would also come together in the end. In his words, the studio "got a bit lucky here and there" on The Witcher 3, and that experience contributed to overconfidence. "Since then, we don't take chances," Nowakowski said. "We want to be sure that it actually works."

That change affects how milestones are handled internally. Rather than allowing missing technical targets to slide into later phases, CD Projekt Red now stops to address platform-specific problems as they appear. Nowakowski described an older approach where one or two missed targets at a milestone could be deferred, only for those gaps to multiply several milestones later into a much harder problem. The new process appears designed to prevent that accumulation.

For players, the most important part of that update is not visual ambition, but predictability. CD Projekt Red is signaling that performance and basic functionality on every announced platform are being checked continuously, not treated as a final stretch problem. After Cyberpunk 2077 was removed from the PlayStation Store following its launch, that is likely to be read as one of the studio's most consequential production changes.

Nowakowski also touched on CD Projekt Red's work around The Witcher 3. He said the company is collaborating with Hungary-based Geeksoft on the newly announced expansion and remaster. According to Nowakowski, Geeksoft has deep experience with The Witcher 3's version of Red Engine and comes from the modding community, where it had already been active around the series. He said that background made the company a natural fit after previously helping CD Projekt Red with the release of The Witcher 3 modding tools.

He added that revisiting The Witcher 3 technology is not straightforward because the Red Engine used for Cyberpunk 2077 is different from the version behind The Witcher 3. That makes outside expertise especially useful for projects tied to the older game.

On the studio's longer-term plans, Nowakowski gave little away. He said CD Projekt Red will speak more about Project Hadar at some point, possibly within the next five years. For now, the company's public focus remains on The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4.