Name: CDPR targets six-year window for Witcher trilogy
Uploaded: 2025-12-02T02:14:06.959Z
Duration: 4 min 51 s
Description: CD Projekt Red says it plans to release The Witcher 4, 5 and 6 within six years, crediting Unreal Engine 5 for faster development. A new GTA 6 leak briefly surfaced online, and IO Interactive confirms it will return to Hitman after finishing 007: First Light.

CD Projekt Red says it plans to release The Witcher 4, 5 and 6 within six years, crediting Unreal Engine 5 for faster development. A new GTA 6 leak briefly surfaced online, and IO Interactive confirms it will return to Hitman after finishing 007: First Light.

CD Projekt Red has announced its intention to release all three games in the new Witcher trilogy—The Witcher 4, 5, and 6—within a six-year window. Joint CEO Michael Nowakowski stated that the company is using Unreal Engine 5 to streamline development and reduce the time between releases. The earliest expected launch for The Witcher 4 is 2027, with subsequent installments projected for 2030 and 2033.

The announcement comes amid industry trends showing long development cycles for major titles, such as Bethesda's Elder Scrolls 6 and Microsoft's Fable. CD Projekt Red's plan is considered ambitious given these precedents. The company also confirmed that The Witcher 4 will not be released in 2026. Other gaming news included a minor Grand Theft Auto 6 leak and confirmation that IO Interactive is planning Hitman 4 after the release of 007 First Light.

CDPR targets six-year window for Witcher trilogy

What's up everybody, Damon here, and in today's gaming news, The Witchers 4, 5, and 6 are all planned to arrive within a 6 year window, there's a new tiny GTA 6 leak, and of course, there will be a Hitman 4. This is your Daily Fix. CD Projekt is sticking to its ambitious plan to release all 3 video games in the new Witcher trilogy within a 6 year period. Speaking during a recent financial call, Joint CEO Michael Nowakowski said that future Witcher video games should be delivered in a shorter period of time. That's because CD Projekt has switched to Unreal Engine 5 for the full production of not only The Witcher 4, but 5 and 6. He said, Our plan still is to launch the whole trilogy within a 6 year period, so yes, that would mean we would plan to have a shorter development time between 4 and 5, between 5 and 6, and so on. That's a hugely ambitious release plan that comes across as all the more surprising, given The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt was originally released in May 2015, 4 years after The Witcher 2. And it's been 5 years since the release of CD Projekt's last full game, Cyberpunk. As we've seen, AAA video game development can be a long endeavor that takes years to complete. Bethesda is still chipping away at The Elder Scrolls 6, which was announced in 2018. Microsoft's new fable game, due out in 2026, was announced in 2020, but development began before then. And there was a 5 year gap between Sony's release of Ghost of Tsushima and Yotei. So, the idea that CD Projekt will release 3 new Witcher games in 6 years is certainly ambitious, and remains to be seen if this plan holds when all is said and done. But assuming it does, when can we expect the games to actually be released? CD Projekt has indicated The Witcher 4 won't come out in 2026, which means 2027 at the earliest. That would mean The Witcher 5 in 2030, and The Witcher 6 in 2033. Moving on, Grand Theft Auto 6 work-in-progress development footage appeared online over the weekend, before it was scrubbed from the internet. But while Rockstar's hotly anticipated sequel has suffered substantial and damaging leaks in the past, this latest leak is anything but. Eagle-eyed leak hunters uncovered an animation reel uploaded to Vimeo by a developer who has worked on a number of Rockstar games. In it were 3 snippets of development footage. As you'd expect, the video was pulled from Vimeo, but the internet noticed, and so the GTA 6 clips are doing the rounds. There are 3 separate clips, each brief and showing animations on what looks like a test map. The first showed a male character removing and inserting a bike into a rental bicycle rack. We see the word Lombike on the frame of the bike, which is probably a parody of real-life Lime Bike rental bicycles. We even saw this bike rental system on an official GTA 6 screenshot released by Rockstar earlier this year. The other two similarly brief clips show a female character, presumably Lucia, getting out the back of a pickup truck in various stages. Again, nothing to write home about. In truth, these very brief animation clips do hint at what we can expect from GTA 6 when it eventually comes out, but they tell us nothing we didn't already know. Of course, you'll be able to rent bikes in GTA 6, and of course, you'll be able to jump off a pickup truck. GTA 6 is now less than a year away. It's set for November 19th, 2026. And finally today, IO Interactive is busy working on James Bond video game 007 First Light, but it says it also has plans to release Hitman 4. In an interview with Variety, CEO Hakan Abrak said, Abrak said that any talk of a Hitman 4 announcement will have to wait until Hitman Co-op arrives in World of Assassination, which continues to enjoy support via DLC. Abrak said, But we will, after that, be talking about the next Hitman, because, of course, there's going to be a next Hitman. The Hitman franchise kicked off in 2000. Hitman 2 Silent Assassin followed in 2002. Blood Money came in 2006. Hitman Absolution followed in 2012, before Hitman, which acted as the first installment of the World of Assassination trilogy, in 2016. Hitman 2 followed in 2018, and then Hitman 3 in 2021. IO Interactive has three main productions right now. Ongoing work on Hitman, World of Assassination, 007 First Light, and a new fantasy IP, appropriately codenamed Project Fantasy. Abrak teased, As for 007 First Light, that is due out March 27th, next year. And that is your Daily Fix for Monday, December 1st. Now that you're caught up on the news, watch the launch trailer for Marvel Cosmic Invasion. I'm Damon Hatfield, and for all your video game news, stay tuned to IGN.

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