The Witcher 4 Xbox Series S update isn't terribly reassuring

CD Projekt RED were quizzed recently on whether or not The Witcher 4 will be able to run on Xbox Series S hardware, and their response was less than convincing.

Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell sat down with The Witcher 4’s director Sebastian Kalemba and its narrative director Philipp Weber yesterday, during which he probed the CD Projekt RED staff members on the likelihood of the title seeing an Xbox Series S release.

“So can players be confident,” asked Chris, “that even though this trailer is on, as you've mentioned, some super secret next gen graphics card, the game could also run on current gen consoles - say an Xbox Series S - at the same time?”

“You know… we are working on a new engine right now, together with Epic's engineers, and there is a great synergy and a great collaboration between us,” replied Kalemba, “And currently we're working on Unreal Engine 5 and our custom build.”

“And obviously we want to support all the platforms - meaning PC, Xbox and Sony, right? - but I cannot, right now, tell you more specifics regarding that.”

Now, I don’t know how familiar you guys are with PR-based waffle, but to me, that sounds like an “I don’t know” which is verging on a “probably not.”

To be completely fair to CD Projekt RED, it might genuinely be too soon into The Witcher 4’s development for them to honestly answer a question like this.

Perhaps they are actually planning to release the game on Xbox Series S, but they need to make sure that doing so, without altering their vision for the game, is something that’s actually feasible.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see The Witcher 4 on the console regardless.

A lot of modern AAA titles are already struggling to perform on Xbox Series S hardware, and CD Projekt RED are known for producing graphically-intensive games.

Only time will tell of course, but just don’t hold your breath.