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Gaming

Witcher 3 Gets Major Hardware Overhaul as Studio Gears Up for 2027 Expansion

Emily Chen 0 comments 8 min read
Witcher 3 Gets Major Hardware Overhaul as Studio Gears Up for 2027 Expansion

CD Projekt Red is raising the bar for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The studio announced new minimum system requirements that will take effect with the next major update, driven in part by the incoming third expansion, Songs of the Past, which arrives in 2027.

The shift reflects a significant tightening of hardware demands. The new baseline includes an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 or Intel Core i5-8400 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card with 8GB of memory, 12GB of system RAM, and a 70GB SSD. Windows 11 becomes mandatory.

The studio justified the overhaul by pointing to evolving technology and support realities. Windows 10 reaches end of support on October 14, 2025, and CD Projekt said it will no longer invest engineering resources testing or supporting the older operating system. The move aligns with how the studio plans to handle Cyberpunk 2077 as well.

Solid-state drives are now required. CD Projekt noted that SSDs deliver faster load times and smoother asset streaming compared to mechanical hard drives, improvements the studio wants to leverage. The game will also run exclusively on DirectX 12, abandoning older rendering APIs that limit performance on modern hardware.

Graphics card support has been narrowed to chips with active Windows 11 drivers from manufacturers, while processors must be officially supported by Microsoft's newest operating system. These guardrails narrow the install base but simplify certification and ongoing optimization.

Players unable or unwilling to upgrade can roll back to an earlier version of the game, though CD Projekt emphasized that only the latest build receives full support, bug fixes, and new improvements.

The expansion itself marks a milestone for the nearly decade-old title. Songs of the Past launches in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC, arriving 12 years after the game's original 2015 debut and 11 years after the second major expansion, Blood and Wine. The franchise has shipped over 60 million copies since launch.

Author Emily Chen: "Pushing minimum specs this aggressively is bold for a 12-year-old game, but it signals CD Projekt's serious intentions to modernize The Witcher 3 before charging players for new content."

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