The Witcher 4 developer reveals highly anticipated game won't arrive before 2027
During an earnings call with investors, the publisher's chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz confirmed The Witcher 4 would not arrive any time soon.
'Even though we do not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026, we are still driven by this financial goal,' he told shareholders.
This should not come as a surprise to those who follow trends in game development, as giant open-world games whose budgets spiral into the hundreds of millions of dollars are not quick to produce.
CD Projekt announced in November 2024 that The Witcher 4 had entered full production, following a fairly prolonged multi-year period of pre-production.
'I'm proud to confirm that several weeks ago the Polaris team wrapped up preproduction and moved on to full-scale production – the most intensive phase of development. We are very pleased with our progress on this project, and I wish to thank the team for its dedication,' CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said in a statement released at the time.
Polaris is the codename given to The Witcher 4's development project.
Despite being some way off, a cinematic trailer for The Witcher 4 was released in December 2024 during The Game Awards. It depicts Ciri attempting to save a villager who has been sacrificed to a monster — which she kills — only to find the young woman has been killed by the villagers anyway.
What does that tell us? The gritty darkness of The Witcher series is present and correct, and the age of Geralt is over, for now.
'Ciri takes center stage as the protagonist, embarking on her own journey to become a professional monster slayer,' reads the trailer's blurb.
CD Projekt has also confirmed The Witcher 4 is planned as the first in a trilogy of games. And the potential release date for the last of those doesn't bear thinking about. We can only hope some of us will still be alive to see it.
The publisher will not want to rush and see a repeat of what happened with Cyberpunk 2077. That game's 2020 launch saw the publisher's stock value take a hit it has spent the last five years attempting to recover from — a still-ongoing process.
Credit to developer CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 has undergone one of the most notable turnarounds of modern gaming, while its 2023 expansion Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty was (almost) universally praised.
The Witcher 3 was released in May 2015, meaning its sequel will arrive well over a decade later.
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