The Witcher 4 Update Gives Us a Good Idea About Its Release Date

According to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 4 is set to begin full production in the second half of the year, which in turn gives us a very good idea of the game's potential release date. To deduce The Witcher 4 release date, you need to look no further than Cyberpunk 2077, which didn't begin production until 2016 after the release of Blood and Wine, an expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This is CD Projelt Red's latest release, and thus a good reference point. 

Between entering full production and releasing in 2020, four years past. You can probably see where we are going at this point. If The Witcher 4 is set to commence full production this year, then basic math suggests it will be out in 2028. What makes this date, in particular, interesting, is leaked Microsoft documents previously revealed the PS6 and next Xbox are tentatively slotted for a 2028 release. If this sounds familiar it is because it is exactly what happened with Cyberpunk 2077, which ended up being a cross-gen release. And, as you will know, it ran terribly on PS4 and Xbox One, creating quite the controversy in the process. Whether The Witcher 4 will follow in the footsteps of Cyberpunk 2077, in this regard, remains to be seen, but it is an interesting overlap. 

There are a couple wrenches that can be thrown into all of this speculation. For one, Cyberpunk 2077 was rushed out the door. It probably needed an extra year of development. Maybe even two years. Given the disaster that was the Cyberpunk 2077 launch, you'd assume CD Projekt Red won't repeat this mistake. To this end, perhaps a five year wait is more likely, which would put the game out in 2029. 

The other potential wrench is the fact that the team working on the game, which will still get bigger, is the biggest team CD Projekt Red has ever assembled. It is tricky to decipher what this will mean for development though as it depends on what the scope of the game is compared to Cyberpunk 2077. If the scope is bigger, then these two things will cancel out. If if it similar, then development should go quicker, which brings 2027 into play. 

At this point, 2029 seems like the safest bet, but a late 2028 release is certainly on the table. And in an industry ripe with delays, you can't count out 2030. Wherever the game lands within this span, it will certainly be at least be on next-gen consoles, and probably this generation consoles as well.