The Witcher 3 is getting a next-gen upgrade as a free update

CD Projekt Red today announced they're fancying-up The Witcher 3 for release on the next generation of consoles, and we on PC will receive those improvements too, with a free update. They say that "the next-gen edition of the game will feature a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times". Details are a vague for now so it's not clear exactly how much fancier the PC edition will become, but at the very least I'd expected ray-traced glimmers when someone tosses a coin to your witcher.

The developers really were vague about technovisual changes as they announced the Xbox Xeries X and PlayStation 5 releases:

"Developed to take advantage of the most powerful gaming hardware, the next-gen edition of the game will feature a range of visual and technical improvements — including ray tracing and faster loading times — across the base game, both expansions, and all extra content."

Okay. No word yet on when the next-gen version is arriving either. But they are clear that this fancied-up next-gen release will come as a standalone game "as well as a free update for everyone who already owns the game on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4."

I'd expect visual improvements to carry over to PC (hell, even Fortnite is adding ray tracing), though might be a bit warier of seeing the same load time improvements cos next-gen consoles have fancy bespoke drive setups. Though I suppose this is in comparison to a generation of consoles which didn't even have SSDs? Anyway, details are thin for now so it's not worth guessing at it, but I assume we'll see plenty of comparison videos and screenshots soon enough.

CD Projekt Red's next game, Cyberpunk 2077, is due to launch on the 9th of November. That's getting ray tracing too.