Given the circumstances, it is unsurprising but disappointing that developer CD Projekt Red won’t be giving The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt PS4 Pro support.
CD Projekt Red explained to Eurogamer that their new project, Cyberpunk 2077, is simply taking up too many resources: “Since we want to fully focus on Cyberpunk 2077 and Gwent, and converting The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from a full HD game into a 4K one would be too much of a time and resource-consuming process, we decided not to release an edition of Wild Hunt supporting the new features of PlayStation Pro.”
The lack of team resources is understandable, given the fact that CD Projekt Red has already declared that Cyberpunk 2077 is “even more ambitious” than they initially expected, and that it has a larger team than The Witcher 3 ever did.
The reason this is disappointing is because the game already runs 4K on PC, and looks excellent. It seems like the PS4 Pro version, then, should be an easy update.
This turns out to not be true, as Tom Morgan of Digital Foundry explains in the above Eurogamer article. Essentially, the PC version was designed to have better textures and hold up under 4K “scrutiny”, whereas the console versions were designed around less power. Updating the game to look good in 4K is much more work than simply raising the resolution. CD Projekt Red is the kind of studio that makes a nearly 200 hour game (with DLC); they do things big or not at all, and they’ve chosen not at all.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Game of the Year Edition is available now.