CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has explained why the studio moved The Witcher 4 from its in-house REDengine to Unreal Engine 5. Speaking on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast, he called the idea that REDengine caused Cyberpunk 2077's problems a mistaken assumption. He revealed that the switch instead came after an early look at Epic's The Matrix Awakens tech demo**.

Nowakowski stated, "It was not the Cyberpunk launch that convinced us to abandon the REDengine and switch completely to Unreal Engine 5 with the future projects. It was more the moment we got an early scoop of the Matrix demo that Epic made." He added that CDPR is the only team besides Epic working inside the engine's "black box," allowing the studio to tweak UE5 to its needs. Nowakowski expects the studio to launch more games on a shorter timeline now that it no longer builds the tech from scratch.

The Witcher 4 is set to launch at some point in 2028. He also clarified that The Witcher 4 won't look like a generic Unreal Engine 5 game.