Since The Witcher 4's stunning ultra-high fidelity debut trailer at The Game Awards last week, there's been quite a bit of consternation from fans over whether it will actually be playable on current-gen hardware. That's something that's only compounded by the mention, in the trailer's fine print and in a brief official blog, that the trailer was pre-rendered on a mysterious “unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX” graphics card, “using assets and models of the game itself. suggesting at least a minor level of similarity to what the game will look like upon arrival.
Developer CD Projekt Red also has some history with older console struggles, of course, with the next-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles proving hugely problematic for the release of Cyberpunk 2077. The studio eventually abandoned them for the Phantom Liberty expansion that will arrive in 2023.
Speaking to CDPR in a new interview this week, Eurogamer asked if the studio could assure console owners that they could actually run it and if it could run on, say, an Xbox Series S, which as things stand is still necessary for any game. launching on Xbox Series X. The developers were a bit coy in response.
Rather than specifically reference concerns about certain consoles, Kalemba went into more detail, but only went so far as to mention that it would be coming to key platforms more broadly.
“The second thing is that yes, we are working on a new engine right now, together with Epic engineers, and there is great synergy and great collaboration between us. And we are currently working on Unreal Engine 5 and our custom engine build. And obviously we want to support all platforms, meaning PC, Xbox and Sony, right, but I can't give you any more details on that right now.”
He also stressed for the second time that this trailer was just a technical sample and a “good reference point” for now.
“It is certainly worth remembering. [that for this] For the first time, we create the cinematic piece, pre-rendered, without post-production, that we want [show that we’re] just aiming to achieve that quality in the cutscenes as much as possible. “That's my opinion: it's a good reference point.”
The emphasis on this being just an early taste, rather than a true 'start of the marketing campaign', is reminiscent of some comments from CDPR joint CEO Micha&lstrok. Nowakowski told Eurogamer recently, which is detailed in more detail in our recent report on what we can expect from The Witcher 4.
Speaking to Eurogamer earlier this summer, Nowakowski explained that while Phantom Liberty had a more truncated six-month marketing campaign before its release, “for a new game, we would still expect a slightly longer campaign, but not by two years.” ” (The two years Cyberpunk 2077 took was due to its delays, he explained, and the studio originally planned for something closer to 12 to 18 months from Keanu Reeves' big moment at E3 to its release.)
Nowakowski also referred to a “massive attack” of marketing as the main starting point of that period of less than two years until launch. “That said, I want to emphasize: that doesn't mean we won't mock or abandon some interesting assets before [a full reveal]. Because the marketing campaign, a little before the release of the game, is different from, say, real “mass attack”. The mass attack is when you announce the date, you start collecting pre-orders and it's really that race from that point, that moment, to the moment you release the game.”
For example, he continued at the time: “If I ask you, what do you know about The Witcher 4? The answer probably isn't much: yes, there are theories and such. But there's nothing really specific. So we want to drop the crumbs here and there so that people, and also the media, can pick it up and try to figure out what it is that we are trying to say this time. [is something] “We can start doing it a little earlier.” That would involve things like “having some video assets, or something to whet the appetite of the fans – not even to create that much buzz,” he said, but just getting the first conversations flowing.
More simply: it might be reasonable to infer that this first trailer would count as one of those “interesting assets” released as a previous teaser: establishing that we'll be playing as Ciri and some basic story fundamentals, such as her becoming a full-fledged witcher. right, but that countdown of approximately 18 months is still a little while away.
Returning to consoles, there's also some interesting context in the form of CDPR VP of Technology Charles Tremblay's comments to Eurogamer earlier this year. There, Tremblay noted that the studio's next game would likely not be released only on PC. “I don't think this is a strategy we want to adopt right now. That said, will it mean that we will have – let's say there were 20 platforms available – that we will have 20 at launch? Maybe not. But at least only for PC, and then dispersed, is not necessarily the approach we want to move forward, for sure.
He also noted that the studio now develops all of its games on “lowest” spec hardware, such as consoles, at the same time as it does so on PC, rather than its old method of working on PC first and then working backwards from there. one of the many causes of Cyberpunk's launch problems.
Console versions that “run very late” are now “unacceptable,” he explained. “It's part of our process; we do the reviews in the console so we know exactly where we are on all platforms. [including] the lowest [spec] platform we have, instead of saying, 'The PC is fine, we can move on.'”
With the process applied to all of the studio's upcoming games, it creates an interesting situation with The Witcher 4. If the studio is hesitant to commit to its viability on current-gen platforms (although not ruling it out, of course), and also now you develop games on the lower spec platforms along with high end PCs, what could those platforms be here? Based on what CD Projekt Red has said so far, we may have to wait a little longer to find out.
Meanwhile, our full interview with CD Projekt Red about The Witcher 4 has more details, while our report on the studio's technical ambition, optimism and development timelines and our full read on what went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077 and how The study responded and offers much more context on how CDPR works today.