Today CD Projekt Red announced that a new Witcher game is in development. The Witcher is great - but fantasy - and they had previously indicated the possibility of a new game in The Witcher universe so this isn't a surprise.

Surprise comes in the form of their using Epic's Unreal Engine 5 to develop the game rather than their own proprietary REDengine.

At launch Cyberpunk 2077 was quite stable for many PC players - including ourselves - but a mess on the Playstation.

No Mans Sky had the same problem.

Switching to this third party engine should greatly reduce that risk for future games.

In addition to generally speeding up development.

For the benefit of non-gamers, Epic licensing out their engine isn't unusual.

The engine is freely accessible to all with a default license seeing Epic take a 5% cut once a game exceeds $1 million in gross revenue.

Custom licenses can also be negotiated as is the case here.

A number of high profile games are known to be in development using this engine but few by studios of CDPR's calibre.

This is a big feather in Epic's cap.

CDPR confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 and its upcoming expansion will continue to use REDengine.

That's no surprise. Remaking the game in Unreal would be costly and pointless.

But REDengine not being used for future games means that CDPR have less incentive to continue its development and we probably shouldn't expect any major engine level improvements for Cyberpunk 2077.

It should be noted that Epic and CDPR own two of the biggest competitors for digital games storefront Steam, the Epic Games Store and Good Old Games and this deal is described as "part of a strategic partnership".

What those other parts might look could be very interesting.

[ Main Image: The Witcher - A New Saga Begins. Credit: CDPR. ]

References

CD Projekt Red (March 21, 2022). New Witcher Saga Announced. CD PROJEKT RED Begins Development on Unreal Engine 5 as Part of a Strategic Partnership with Epic Games.

Game Rant. (January 29, 2022). All Games Confirmed To Be Using Unreal Engine 5 So Far.

The Witcher [@witchergame] (March 22, 2022). thewitcher.ly/ANewSagaBegins. Twitter.

TheWitcher.com (March 22, 2022). A New Saga Begins.

Unreal Engine. FAQ. (viewed March 22, 2022)