CD Projekt Red Promises More PS5 Performance Fixes for The Witcher 3 Remastered

Monday, October 5, 2026 — The best-reviewed game of the year is also the most-patched one. Less than a week after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered launched as a free update for existing owners on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, CD Projekt Red has told players exactly what's coming in the next update — and it's squarely aimed at the platform that's had the roughest ride: PS5.

In a new post shared across its social channels, the Polish studio confirmed five areas of focus for the upcoming patch: further performance improvements, "particularly on PS5"; further visual adjustments; fixes for My Rewards and Twitch Drops; making Ukrainian localization available in other regions on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S; and voiceover audio fixes on consoles. There is no release date yet — CDPR social media director Marcin Momot said only that the studio is "aiming to address many of these in the next update," per coverage of the announcement.

Two patches down

This isn't the start of the patching process — it's the continuation of a fast-moving one. The studio already shipped two quick fixes in the days after launch: patch 5.00b for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and the Xbox Play Anywhere PC version, and a Steam hotfix (5.00c), both landing October 1, as reported by Nintendo Life. The first round's headline fixes: restoring DLSS upscaling in the Xbox Play Anywhere PC version, where the option had been missing entirely; "various lighting adjustments," including interiors that rendered too dark; and parity tweaks to bring the console versions in line with the PC release. The studio also prepared a separate PC hotfix for players whose games wouldn't save when their Windows Documents folder path contained special characters — the kind of maddening, specific bug that only shows up at scale.

The pace matters because the remaster's problems are the kind players notice within an hour. The new lighting — brighter, warmer, with a heavy bloom effect — has split the community down the middle. Some players say it flattens the mood of the original; PC players have been passing around the tip to just disable bloom in the settings to get the contrast back. CDPR has been unusually frank about it: Momot said the team is "looking into addressing the Bloom effect across all platforms," adding that "we're hoping to have the changes ready for the next update but no details yet," and associate game director Sasko confirmed on X that "we have shipped two hotfixes for The Witcher 3 Remastered and there is more in the works, including bloom effect."

A launch that landed — mostly

None of this has dented the remaster's reception. Critics put it at 94 on Metacritic — the highest score of the year on the site, per Video Games Chronicle (Pure Xbox has it at 93, still second-best of 2026) — and players showed up in force: Sasko posted a SteamDB screenshot showing 137,724 concurrent players over the weekend, an eleven-year-old RPG out-drawing plenty of new releases. Co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has said the team never seriously considered charging for the update, which lands as a free refresh for existing owners and a standalone purchase for newcomers — and on Xbox, it comes with a genuine bonus: the remaster turns the game into an Xbox Play Anywhere title, handing Xbox players a free copy of the PC version. Switch 2 owners who bought the original Switch version get a free digital copy too.

The catch, as WCCFTech's launch-week coverage put it, is that the visual improvements and gameplay tweaks came at a cost: the new version doesn't run as smoothly as the previous next-gen update did on PC and consoles. On PC, players have options — community mods to tame path tracing, or simply rolling back to the older next-gen build. Console players have neither, which is why the "particularly on PS5" line in today's roadmap post is doing so much heavy lifting.

The console gap

That gap — between what PC players can fix themselves and what console players have to wait for — is the real story of this launch week. On PC, the community moved in hours: bloom toggles, path-tracing optimization mods, comparison screenshots of old vs. new lighting. On PS5 and Xbox, players get whatever CDPR ships, whenever it ships, subject to console certification. The Switch 2 version, notably, hasn't received either of the October 1 fixes yet — Nintendo Life's estimate is that console certification could take a couple of weeks, though that's the outlet's read, not a CDPR commitment.

Today's roadmap at least tells console players the studio knows where the pain is. Performance first on PS5, visuals second, and the long tail of smaller fixes — rewards integration, localization availability, voiceover audio — rounding out the list. The studio also says it's working on bringing more mods to all platforms, which would narrow the PC-console gap for future issues, though that's a longer-term promise than the next patch.

What happens next

The next update has no date, and CDPR is being careful not to give one — the studio says it's still investigating reports coming through its technical support portal, which means the fix list could grow before it ships. For players on the fence: the remaster is free if you own the game, it's one of the best-reviewed releases of the year, and the studio's patching cadence has been daily-to-weekly since launch. For PS5 players specifically, waiting for the next patch before starting a fresh run might be the smart play. The Path isn't going anywhere — and as this week proved, neither is CDPR's to-do list.

This week's gaming roundup has the rest of what's happening around the industry, and our PAX Aus preview covers what's coming to the Switch 2 that isn't a decade-old masterpiece.