Those who were cautiously optimistic that the next-generation upgrades for CD Projekt Red games Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 would release according to their schedule by the end of this year look to be out of luck. Both upgrades have been delayed into 2022, with first-quarter 2022 aimed for Cyberpunk 2077 and second quarter 2022 aimed for The Witcher 3.
This news was released via their official Twitter feed, breaking the news:
IMPORTANT PRODUCTION UPDATE pic.twitter.com/KOnaIVOt4v
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 20, 2021
According to the statement, “Based on recommendations supplied by teams supervising the development of both games, we decided to postpone their releases until 2022.” With the release of Cyberpunk 2077 on then current-gen hardware being much maligned for its wide range of bugs, glitches, errors, and more it is not a surprise to see the studios cautiously approaching the release of these.
This is also not the first time it was suggested this might be the case. Earlier this year in an earnings call, VP of business development at CD Projekt Michał Nowakowski was unable to offer a concrete date for either of the upgrades. As part of the blowback from the release of Cyberpunk 2077, the company made clear they would not suggest release dates unless they were absolutely sure they would hit them. While during the call he stated they did have dates in mind, they were not against moving the release date into next year should that be necessary, which clearly now we see that it was.
Since Cyberpunk 2077 had released late last year the company lost much of the public trust they had accrued over the years. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One could barely run the game and were plagued with pop-ins, textual issues, as well as animation issues, and on top of the plethora of bugs. those that had a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One X, or PlayStation 4 Pro had a far easier time actually playing the game though still saw plenty of issues.
The game is in a far better state now than it was, though it still has some issues that need to be worked out. CD Projekt declared the game was in a “satisfactory” state, not meaning they would stop patching and fixing issues, but that they believed they could also begin creating new content of the game as well.
