While Apple laptops have never really been the first stop for PC gaming, Linux is slowly shaping up to be an excellent gaming platform, largely thanks to open-source development efforts as well as work from the likes of AMD and NVIDIA, who have both put significant work into their respective Linux drivers in recent years. This makes efforts like the Asahi Linux Project all the more intriguing. Asahi Linux is a project that aims to bring Linux to Apple Silicon Macs—a task that has proven rather difficult, thanks to the intricacies of developing a bespoke GPU driver for Apple's custom ARM GPUs. In a recent blog post, the graphics developer behind the Asahi Linux Project showed off a number of AAA games, albeit older titles, running on an Apple M1 processor on the latest Asahi Linux build.

To run the games on Apple Silicon, Asahi Linux uses a "game playing toolkit," which relies on a number of custom graphics drivers and emulators, including tools from Valve's Proton translation layer, which ironically was also the foundation for Apple's Game Porting Toolkit. Asahi uses FEX to emulate x86 on ARM, Wine as a translation layer for Windows apps, and DXVK and vkd3d-proton for DirectX-Vulkan translation. In the blog post, the Asahi developer claims that the alpha is capable of running games like Control, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 at playable frame rates. Unfortunately, 60 FPS is not yet attainable in the majority of new high-fidelity games, there are a number of indie titles that run quite well on Asahi Linux, including Hollow Knight, Ghostrunner, and Portal 2.

Soon, you'll be able to play your favorite games from GOG, like the Witcher series or Cyberpunk 2077, on multiple devices of your choice. We're teaming up with Amazon Luna cloud gaming service to give you even more ways of enjoying your titles, while still keeping our mission of DRM-free gaming. Let's dive into it and take a look at how it works!

What exactly is Amazon Luna?
It is a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Amazon. The service first launched in March 2022 in the United States, and then spread its reach to other countries last year, with availability in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Luna works by streaming games from cloud servers and runs on Amazon's powerful cloud computing service Amazon Web Services (AWS). And what it means is that it allows its customers to enjoy gaming on the go, on the couch, or anywhere else you have an internet connection. No lengthy downloads or updates, no need for an expensive gaming PC, complicated setup, or heavy computer processing - just pure joy of running your games on a device of your choice in high-quality.

Reuters has conducted an interview with Adam Badowski and Michał Nowakowski—Joint Chief Executive Officers at CD Projekt. The news agency wanted to find out more about the current roster of projects in development across the Polish gaming group's globally-scattered studios. The Boston branch of CD Projekt Red has started work on a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel—codenamed "Orion"—as revealed by Igor Sarzyńsk (Narrative Director) earlier this month. The sequel's scope could grow beyond a single-player campaign—Nowakowski mentioned in the Reuters interview that multiplayer elements are under consideration by "Orion's" design team, but he declined to elaborate any further. CD Projekt Red downed tools on Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer aspect around launch time (December 2020), and instead focused on improving the game's core functionality. A "triple-A" multiplayer spin-off was teased a few years ago, but abandoned at some point in favor of a new "more systematic, agile approach."

Badowski stated that "Orion" is still in a conceptual phase of development, and its team is expected to grow over the course of 2024—he anticipates around eighty members of staff by the end of the year. The North American team appears to be on a recruitment drive, while the European "Orion" gang is not expected to expand as quickly. The priority for CD Projekt's Warsaw studio is "Polaris" AKA the next mainline Witcher title—Badowski elaborated on their hiring goals in Poland: "we'd like to have around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year." The joint-CEOs want "Polaris" entering into a full production stage in 2024—industry analysts predict a 2026 or 2027 launch window. Reuters brought up the obligatory question about artificial intelligence's place in CDPR operations—Nowakowski responded with: "We think that AI is something that can help improve certain processes in game production, but not replace people." When grilled about lessons learned from launch day disasters, Badowski stated that his company's production pipelines have undergone a positive overhaul: "We believe that in the future we'll avoid a premiere like the one we faced with Cyberpunk 2077"

CD Projekt declared in an investor regulatory announcement (issued on May 11) that its troubled "Project Sirius" multiplayer game was back on track with a renewed development focus. Their briefing is titled: "New framework for Project Sirius, decision concerning partial reversal of the impairment allowance for 2022, and write-off of part of the development expenditures incurred in Q1 2023." As reported back in March, the Polish gaming group made the difficult choice to reboot its multiplayer focused Witcher title and write-off a significant chunk of the development budget. Last week's update seems to indicate that their North American studio, The Molasses Flood, is still involved in the making of Project Sirius and that a smaller chunk of project expenditure has been written off in the mean time.

The company's investor announcement coincided with emerging rumors of employee layoffs - gaming news outlets started to pick up on social media declarations last Friday (May 12). Yesterday CD Projekt confirmed that the refocused and restarted development process has resulted in a round of headcount cuts on both sides of the Atlantic. In a statement issued to PC Gamer, a company spokesperson says: "Because the project changed, so has the composition of the team that's working on it - mainly on The Molasses Flood's side. The concrete number of employees we parted ways with is 21 team members in the US and 8 in Poland (working on the project outside of the US)."

CD Projekt has admitted to writing off the development funds spent so far expended on Project Sirius - a codename for a satellite studio produced spin-off game in its best selling The Witcher series. The Polish development and publishing group is restarting Project Sirius from scratch, and it is not clear whether their East Coast USA-based outfit, Molasses Flood, will remain as part of the rebooted cycle. Within a recently released company financial report its reasoning was made clear: "The aforementioned decision is based on results of evaluation of the scope and commercial potential of the original concept of Project Sirius, and ongoing work on formulating a new framework for this project."

CD Projekt had spent over $7 million in 2022 on development costs for Project Sirius. More than $2.2 million has been spent in 2023, presumably right up until the decision to bin all currently completed work. Project Sirius was announced in the autumn of 2022, and at around that time Molasses Flood was undertaking a large scale recruitment drive. The game was in a pre-production phase by the end of the year, with over sixty members of staff confirmed to be working on it. Development was also being supported by members of CD Projekt RED's team at their Warsaw headquarters, and now it is very apparent that the overseers were not happy with what was going on in New England.

Steam's Spring 2023 sale has kicked off, offering a bunch of PC games at discount. To celebrate its first year anniversary, Valve is also giving a 10 percent discount for the Steam Deck during the Spring sale. There are plenty of great titles on sale, and some of the popular include Forza Horizon 5, God of War, Battlefield 2042, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Total War Warhammer, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more.

There are several franchises on discount as well, including The Witcher, Battlefield, Borderlands, Fallout, Resident Evil, The Elder Scrolls, Civilization, Hitman, Doom, Far Cry, and others. As noted, the Steam Deck is also on sale with 10 percent discount. This means that if you are in the US, you can get the base version for just $359 while the 512 GB version is down to $584.

CD Projekt RED has announced that it will release its new big patch for The Witcher 3: Next-Gen today, coming to all platforms, including PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We still do not have all the patch notes but Marcin Momot, Global Communication Director at CD Projekt RED, noted that it will be around 2 GB on the PC and between 10 GB and 20 GB on consoles.

It will be interesting to see if CD Projekt RED managed to optimize the CPU multi-threading as the game was pretty hard even on high-end systems. CD Projekt RED already said it was looking into this issue, and hopefully, this new patch will address this and other issues that have been plaguing the game. We'll update the article as soon as official release notes are available.

Update: Patch 4.02 for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has gone live and should be available on PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles soon. Full release notes are now available.

Welcome to a new addition to TechPowerUp! where we give you an overview of new games that are set to launch in the coming week. This will be a weekly feature and it'll contain a short blurb about each game, some screenshots and maybe a video as well. We're open to feedback about this format and we'll make adjustments as we go along.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition / This week's AAA title / Wednesday December 14
Enhanced with the power of next-gen consoles and modern PC hardware in mind, the upcoming release of CD Projekt Red's award-winning role-playing game will feature dozens of visual, performance, and technical enhancements over the original. These include ray tracing support, faster loading times on consoles, as well as a variety of mods integrated into the experience, among many others. Along with new additional content inspired by The Witcher series from Netflix, these will be covered next week in a dedicated REDstreams event on Twitch, where the studio will present gameplay from the next-gen version of the game.

CD PROJEKT RED today revealed that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development with Unreal Engine 5, kicking off a new saga for the franchise and a new technology partnership with Epic Games.

Today's announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED's previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons.

According to the latest information coming directly from CD Projekt RED, we are finding out that Witcher 3, one of the most popular releases from CDPR, is going to be ported to the next-generation console lineup by 3rd party studio. Here you can read the message CDPR passed in its H1 conference call:

CD Projekt president Adam KicinskiRegarding The Witcher 3 and its next-gen version: this project is developed outside, with our proven partner who had delivered the 4K version of The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 3 for Switch, so they already know our technology very well. We asked them to prepare the next-gen port, and as I said during my presentation, we expect a full next-gen experience, with great next-gen features, but it doesn't interfere with the next-gen development of CP, which is being done internally by the CP team, and we're confirming that CP will be released in the next-gen version. Well we have to differentiate two things: the current version, which will be released in November, will be playable from the beginning when next-gen consoles are released; you will be able to play the current-gen version on next-gen from day 1. And you can expect a bit higher quality than on the current-gen. However, the full-blown next-gen version is planned for next year and it will be developed internally.

CD Projekt Red announced that the cumulative sale of games in the Witcher franchise has surpassed the 50 million mark. This news comes three years after the developer broke through the 25 million mark on the same franchise, and speaks to the intemporality that can be achieved by games developed during the last gen. While there will always be improvements in graphics technologies (though the diminishing returns equation is already definitely present), it can be said that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt still remains a beautiful game today. This is true even if you don't consider the numerous graphical improvement mods that have been made available since; and that helps games keep their sales momentum for many more years than those developed in previous gens.

Sales of games on The Witcher franchise have obviously increased following Netflix's successful adaptation of the universe for its The Witcher streaming series, with original author of The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski, also enjoying increased book sales in the same period. It's a circular system of sorts - and a well deserved one for CD Projekt Red. Here's hoping the developers can achieve the same level of acclaim (and sales) on their Cyberpunk 2077 project - only four months to go now.

Polish game studio CD Projekt, behind the smash-hit "The Witcher" game franchise and 2020's most anticipated game, "Cyberpunk 2077," turned a handsome profit in 2019. The studio reported 521 million PLN (roughly USD $125 million) in sales for the fiscal year 2019, which the company says is a 44 percent growth over 2018. Its consolidated net profit increased by 60 percent over 2018, to 175 million PLN ($42 million). Interestingly, CD Projekt attributes its growth to sales of "The Witcher 3," particularly its Nintendo Switch release, and "GWENT" on mobile. Pre-orders of "Cyberpunk 2077" will stream cash into CDPR's coffers, leading up to its September 2020 release.

Polish gaming powerhouse CD Projekt confirmed that it has no plans of sitting idle after finishing work on its magnum opus and the year's most anticipated game, "Cyberpunk 2077." In an interview with journalists, CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński announced that the company will begin work on the next chapter in "The Witcher" franchise. Kiciński wouldn't take names or call the game "The Witcher 4," but simply that the game will be set in the fictional universe by Andrzej Sapkowski. Kiciński stated that a small team within CDPR will be tasked with preparatory work on this game, while larger teams will focus on DLCs and content additions for "Cyberpunk 2077" over an extended period of time.

Winner of over 800 awards, including 250 Game of the Year awards, The Witcher 3: Wild Huntis an RPG set in a fantastic open world full of adventure, danger, and mystery. As professional monster slayer Geralt of Rivia, gamers must set out to find the Child of Prophecy - a powerful entity that may send the world spiraling toward destruction. Along the way, the witcher will find himself facing not only mighty foes, but also difficult choices, the consequences of which will ripple throughout the game's epic narrative.

Set to launch this year both digitally and in retail, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Editionfor Nintendo Switch comes with the base game, as well as every piece of additional content ever released. This includes both story expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, as well as all 16 free DLCs. In total, the Complete Edition offers over 150 hours of gameplay, for the first time playable truly on the go. The game is being ported to Nintendo Switch by Saber Interactive in close cooperation with CD PROJEKT RED.

The grander the stories, usually, the humbler the beginnings. And so it was for CD Projekt Red with its first adaptation of The Witcher, Wiedźmin, based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski's work. The original The Witcher game was built by a CD Projekt Red that had no internal engine, and thus, had to license (then free from EA) developer Bioware's proprietary Aurora engine (used on that company's original neverwinter Nights and expansion packs).

Now, you can have this piece of CD Projekt Red's history for free. Just head on to GOG and you can snag yourself a free, DRM-less copy of the game, including some digital goodies (You'll have to download GWENT, CD Projekt Red's card game, then click on the "Get GWENT card + The Witcher for free" banner. The original game was far, far simpler - and, at the same time, more complex - than its sequels. The version on offer is the definitive one, in the form of the Enhanced Edition: CD Projekt dedicated even more time to polishing the game over the original: it includes over 200 new animations, additional NPC models and recoloring of generic NPC models as well as monsters; vastly expanded and corrected dialogues in translated versions, improved stability, redesigned inventory system and load times reduced by roughly 80%. And if that's not enough, the protagonist has white hair! And if you didn't already know: there's a Netflix series incoming.

Remember when we brought you news that The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski was looking for payment in the order of 6% of total The Witcher profits from CD Projekt Red? At the time, CD Projekt Red made it clear that they thought their contractual obligations had been fulfilled - which meant that Sapkowski's decision to accept a lump-sum payment instead of a percentage on the profits was his own.

Well, news is circulating that the parties have reached a silent, under the table agreement, much like Sapkowski initially wanted. It remains unclear whether CD Projekt Red's lawyers actually saw some merit on the author's claims, or if the studio just wanted to avoid any sort of bad press that could be associated with these developments. Choosing to focus on the studio's well-being and not being driven into a conflict with the author of the universe they were built upon certainly wouldn't boost morale in the studio. With the money the studio has garnered from all its investments, it's likely a "pay and forget" stance was enacted, though for less than the initial $16 million Sapkowski was looking for.

Well, this was bound to happen sometime - but I expected it sooner, rather than as late as now. The Witcher series has become an incredible success in the videogame department, with each successive entry in the series becoming more and more of a masterpiece, culminating in The Witcher 3 - considered by many to be the ultimate RPG yet. The story for the games' development by CD Projekt Red goes way back to 2000, when the developers approached Andrjez Sapkowski on acquiring the rights to The Witcher, after a failed endeavor from another studio who had already bought the rights, but failed to deliver a game - Metropolis, which counted with Adrian Chmielarz (known for Bulletstorm, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter).

Andrjez Sapkowki's approach to the whole "games industry" informed his decision on how to sell the copyright to The Witcher series' and characters - with a "Well they brought a big bag of money! (...) What I expect from an adaptation: a big bag of money. That is all." And that is what he got, according to himself, though CD Projekt Red's co-founder Marcin Iwinski described it as "(not) a huge amount of money".

Well, that's it, then: we now have yet another CD Projekt Red game to look forward to. It was always expected that this would be the case: that The Witcher didn't end with The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. It just couldn't; that game was much too close to a masterpiece, and too much of a commercial success, for that world not to be visited in other circumstances. In an interview with Bankier.pl, CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński spoke about the possibility of a new Witcher game - outside the pretty clear-cut The Witcher trilogy arc we already know (and love).

"This does not mean, of course, that we will leave the world of The Witcher. The Witcher is one of two franchises on which to build the future activities of the company. Today, unfortunately, I can not reveal anything more."

Adam Kiciński, CD Projekt Red CEO