The Witcher 4 release date may not be as far away as you think. CD Projekt Red has built a reputation with some that it took them a long time to develop games and release them very early, but none of these beliefs are well-founded. Cyberpunk 2077 was announced eight years before it was released. If this is your only reference point, it’s easy to think that CD Project Red will be releasing their games before release. But, Cyberpunk 2077 is one-time for the Polish developer. CD Projekt Red announced both The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 two years before they were released, which is obviously more representative of your standard AAA release.
Cyberpunk 2077 also gives players the impression that CD Project Red takes a long time to develop a game, but it is also misleading. While Cyberpunk 2077 announced in 2012, it only pre-produced halfway through 2016, with a proper development with a properly sized team starting even later. Meanwhile, it The Witcher 3 was made in about three and a half years The Witcher 2 was made in a similar amount of time.
What does this have to do with The Witcher 4? Now, this week, CD Project Red announced that it will start developing new Cyberpunk and Witcher games starting in 2022. If so, it would presumably mean The Witcher 4 – or whatever the project ends up with – will come out in 2025 or 2026, given the above schedules. If we work backwards, it would suggest that the game would be released somewhere in 2023 or 2024 if it had a similar release schedule to release as previous entries.
What we do know is that it will not have is a huge gap between revelation and release Cyberpunk 2077, because CD Projekt Red also confirmed this week that it wants to shorten its approach in this regard, or in other words, want to reveal its games when it’s closer to release.
Take all these speculations with a grain of salt for now, because that’s all it is, speculation. However, this is not entirely unfounded speculation, and after that Cyberpunk 2077, CD Project Red probably itching to go on and return to his bread and butter.