The Witcher 4 is now in pre-production

pcgamer.com:

The wheels appear to be turning smoothly on The Witcher 4(opens in new tab), the next big game in development at CD Projekt. Just a couple of months after the studio confirmed that it is in fact working on a new Witcher game, CD Projekt chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz said development is now in the «pre-production» phase.

«We have recently wrapped up the research phase, which means the project has now progressed to pre-production, and we've begun to capitalize development expenses related to this new game,» Nielubowicz said in a financial results highlight video.

«We are very eager to revisit the universe which has shaped our history to such an extent,» CEO Adam Kiciński added in a separate statement(opens in new tab).

Separating the «research» and «pre-production» phases of The Witcher 4 development might seem like splitting hairs, but I'm willing to be generous about it in this case because by all appearances the game will not merely continue the adventures of Geralt. CD Projekt has said it will be an entirely «new saga,» possibly featuring a brand new school of school of witchers(opens in new tab) that doesn't appear in Andrzej Sapkowski's novels. Fitting all-original characters and content into the existing Witcher world puts a lot more weight on the shoulders of developers.

Full-on development of The Witcher 4 is still a long way off: The number of people on the project is growing but the bulk of CD Projekt's development team is focused on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion. That remains expected to roll out sometime in 2023(opens in new tab).