The Witcher 4's console-first development could hit roadblocks with the Xbox Series S

[midian182]

Forward-looking: Despite The Witcher 4 being many years away from release, developer CD Projekt Red is already warning that getting the game to run on the Xbox Series X at 60 frames per second is going to be "extremely challenging."

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia met with Epic and Charles Tremblay, CD Projekt RED's VP of technology, in Poland following the tech demo showing off Unreal Engine 5.6 earlier this month.

CD Projekt has emphasised that the demo is a representation of what The Witcher 4 will look like on the standard PlayStation 5 with ray tracing enabled – it wasn't the actual game itself.

Tremblay said the development team switched to a console-first approach to achieve this target, rather than going the usual route of scaling down from the PC.

The exec says this traditional PC-first approach has caused many problems in the past. He's no doubt referring to Cyberpunk 2077, which had so many issues on consoles that it was removed from the PlayStation Store for months.

Tremblay explained that there is still a lot of work left to ensure The Witcher 4 runs at 60 fps on the PS5 and resembles the tech demo, but the team seems confident it can be done.

However, playing the next installment of the franchise at 60 fps on the Xbox Series S might be an impossibility. Tremblay said such a feat will be "extremely challenging."

"Let's just say that this is something that we need to figure out," he added.

The Xbox Series S has proven to be problematic for developers in the past. One of the most famous instances was Baldur's Gate 3. Larian didn't initially confirm the Xbox version due to technical challenges – particularly enabling split-screen on the Series S. The 150 GB install size was also an issue. It meant that the Xbox release of BG3 arrived about three months after the PS5 launch, and without the split-screen feature, which was added in a later update.

Microsoft mandates that games released on the Xbox Series X to also be available on the Series S. The requirement can result in some titles avoiding the Xbox altogether, such as the demanding Black Myth: Wukong.

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The Witcher 4's console-first development could hit roadblocks with the Xbox Series S

 

[The Talking Tech]

I wonder if these developers would also express the same concern about the Switch 2 version since Nintendo's newest system has even less hardware capabilities than the Series S.

Game developers in general love to pick on the Series S, but I yet get to hear any "hardware concerns" about the Switch 2, keeping in mind that system is many aspects is no better than a ps4 pro.

 

[torvuswalds]

In other news, water is wet.

 

[dangh]

They already effed up with cyberpunk released on xbox one and ps4, do they really want to repeat same disaster? This game will take another 3-5 years to release, ps6 will come in 2-3 years, they should just aim for the next gen or we will have another half backed game.
And I hope they don't even have switch 2 on their horizon at all, it is slower than ps4 and twice slower than xsx...

 

[poohbear]

Just focus on PS6 and next gen Xbox if it's gonna be released in 3-4 years instead of a messed up release in previous consoles. Do 1 thing really well at 100% instead of 4-5 things at 25% / 20%.

 

[gamerk2]

Just focus on PS6 and next gen Xbox if it's gonna be released in 3-4 years instead of a messed up release in previous consoles. Do 1 thing really well at 100% instead of 4-5 things at 25% / 20%.

That's not how management (all financial guys) thinks: Why sell to fewer consoles instead of more? Obviously, more consoles equals more sales equals more profit, right?

 

[nnguy2]

By the time the game releases the Xbox s and ps5 will be close to 8yrs old...

 

[Watzupken]

I think running Witcher 3 with enhanced graphics itself will tank performance on the Xbox Series X, don't even talk about Series S that is gimped too severely.

 

[Billybobjoey]

I wonder if these developers would also express the same concern about the Switch 2 version since Nintendo's newest system has even less hardware capabilities than the Series S.

Game developers in general love to pick on the Series S, but I yet get to hear any "hardware concerns" about the Switch 2, keeping in mind that system is many aspects is no better than a ps4 pro.

Have you seen the Switch 1 version of Witcher 3? I'm sure they'll probably be able to scale down Witcher 4 for a Switch 2 release, but I'd expect it to be in line with W3 on Switch 1 which is...less than desirable to put it nicely.

 

[The Talking Tech]

Have you seen the Switch 1 version of Witcher 3? I'm sure they'll probably be able to scale down Witcher 4 for a Switch 2 release, but I'd expect it to be in line with W3 on Switch 1 which is...less than desirable to put it nicely.

And that's my point, no developer complaints publicly about Nintendo's Switch (in)capabilities they just release the games and that's it...on the other hand they don't stop B****ing left and right about the Series S and yet it's a superior system than the Switch 2.