Polish studio CD Projekt RED announces that the new The Witcher has officially completed its research phase and has begun pre-production.
Despite preparations for production, the development of the new Witcher is still far from being launched. While the number of people working on the project is growing, most of the CD Projekt RED development team is focused on the next expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, which is due out sometime next year, but is also tracking various fixes, preparing an offline multiplayer mode that Officially moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5.
“We recently completed the research phase, which means that the project has moved into the pre-production phase, and we have begun to account for the development costs associated with this new game,” said Piotr Nelyubovich, Vice President and CFO of CD Projekt Group. “We are also very committed to the launch of our strategic partnership with Epic Games, whereby our next games, starting with the new Witcher project mentioned above, will be based on the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine.” Adam Kichinski, CEO of CD Projekt added:“We can’t wait to revisit the universe that has so profoundly shaped our history. We recently completed the research phase for the next chapter of the Witcher saga, which means that additional development costs will be included in our balance sheet from now on.”
CD Projekt RED will update the Witcher universe
Following a teaser via an image showing a never-before-seen witcher pendant, CD Projekt Red stated that it would be a brand new saga that would feature a brand new school of wizards not found in Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels. Adding completely original characters and content to the existing Witcher universe also places a heavy burden on the shoulders of the developers.