CD Projekt Red has confirmed a Witcher 4 physical edition complete with collectible extras, and says the box will ship even without a disc inside it if that’s what Sony’s hardware plans require. Joint CEO Michal Nowakowski tied the promise to Sony’s move to stop manufacturing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, a cutoff that lands close to The Witcher 4’s own targeted 2028 launch. The game is already running on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, well ahead of that release window.
What the Witcher 4 physical edition includes
Nowakowski’s confirmation covers the box itself: a physical package with the kind of collectible extras, or feelies, that CD Projekt Red has bundled with previous Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 releases. Typically that means an art book, a map, a steelbook case or similar items rather than the game data itself. What he did not confirm is a PlayStation 5 disc inside that box. Sony controls disc manufacturing, not CD Projekt Red, and the studio has said plainly it cannot guarantee a disc will exist by the time The Witcher 4 ships.
Nowakowski put it bluntly, saying CD Projekt Red is at the mercy of Sony’s manufacturing factories. That is a meaningful qualifier: the studio can promise a box, extras and a spine on a shelf, but it cannot promise the disc that used to define a physical edition in the first place. A confirmed physical edition and a confirmed disc are two separate promises, and only one of them is CD Projekt Red’s to make.
Why a PS5 disc isn’t guaranteed
Sony’s decision affects every publisher shipping new PlayStation titles from January 2028, not just CD Projekt Red. If the cutoff holds, a PS5 physical edition released after that date most likely means a box containing a download code and the usual extras, with the disc itself simply absent. For anyone who buys physical media specifically to own a playable copy independent of a server or a digital licence, that distinction matters more than the packaging does. A box on a shelf is not the same guarantee it used to be.
Our last look at CD Projekt Red’s Witcher output covered a narrower, PC-side problem: the Witcher 3 Remastered’s new PC requirements outpacing the original release’s system requirements. Since then, the studio’s hardware headache has shifted from CPU and GPU minimums it controls to a manufacturing timeline it does not. Where the Remastered story was about CD Projekt Red raising its own bar, this one is about Sony lowering a ceiling the studio has no say over.
What to watch
Two dates line up here. Sony’s cutoff for new PlayStation disc manufacturing lands in January 2028. CD Projekt Red’s own target for The Witcher 4 sits in that same year, on a game already running on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. If Sony holds that line, expect any PS5 physical edition of The Witcher 4 to ship as a box with a download code and the collectible extras, rather than a disc. Nothing from Sony has changed that timeline so far, and CD Projekt Red has no manufacturing lever of its own to pull.
