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Comment by impulser_ | Hacker News Reader

People complaining about this being a remake, but I'm assuming they made the remake as a way for their developers to get use to Unreal 5 before making Witcher 4 which is also built using Unreal 5.

Easier to build a game you already know in a new game engine than to create a completely new game. Especially if you don't want the game to be filled with bugs.

CD has always used in an house game engine for their games.

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I don't think that holds if you read the first paragraph of the article. Fool's Theory, a separate studio, is doing the remake in UE5; not CDPR. With that said, this will allow Fool's Theory to help as a support studio for Witcher 4 after the remake since they'll be using the same toolset.

This reminds me of how Game Freak sent their recent Pokemon remake out to another studio to work on with different technology while Game Freak makes new franchise IP. 2 examples doesn't make a pattern but is this a known business strategy within game development?

Not only is this common but it's how some companies have built their reputation and money, see Bluepoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluepoint_Games#Games_develope...

That's true, although Fool's Theory is full of former CDPR people that worked on W3 and CP. I'm assuming it will be a similar situation to that of Spokko where eventually it might be brought under the CDP umbrella. (That's just speculation though, I don't have any insider knowledge on this).

Exactly; while CDPR and Fool's Theory will be working on different games, they'll be able to share resources extensively given the common platform. I wouldn't be surprised if they divide up work on a lot of the Witcher-specific extensions to Unreal's scripting, AI, and so on.

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