New Witcher Game Officially Enters Pre-Production

Just in case we didn’t already have enough games to be excited about, back in March, CD Projekt Red officially confirmed that the next game in The Witcher series is on the way. Which, for simplicity’s sake, I’d love to call The Witcher 4, but the studio’s global PR director has been quite clear that that isn’t the game that’s been announced, thank you very much. Fair enough. 

So, if it’s not The Witcher 4, then what is it exactly? Apart from a mysterious teaser image of a witcher medallion covered in snow and the promise that the title will kick off “a new saga for the franchise”, we frankly know very little about it. We do know that it’s being developed in the shiny new Unreal Engine 5 as opposed to the studio’s proprietary REDengine, as part of a “multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games” (it’s not going to be an Epic Games Store exclusive, don’t worry), but that’s as far as official information goes. Until now, that is, because it’s just been confirmed that the game has entered pre-production.

As reported by VGC, the news was announced yesterday by CD Projekt’s chief financial officer, Piotr Nielubowicz, as part of the company’s earnings results: “We have recently wrapped up the research phase, which means the project has now progressed to pre-production and we’ve begun to capitalise development expenses related to this new game,” he said.

Despite that though, it was added that the majority of the studio’s efforts are currently going towards the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, which we recently got the first details for: “The bulk of our production capacity has now shifted to developing a large, story-driven expansion for Cyberpunk, which we expect to release next year,” Nielubowicz said.