CD Projekt Red Indefinitely Delays Next-Gen Witcher 3 Release For PS5 And Xbox Series X
CD Projekt Red, the developers behind The Witcher games, and Cyberpunk 2077, announced an unfortunate delay in a Tweet—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for next-gen systems, namely the PS5 and Xbox Series X. While the originally planned release date was supposed to be sometime this quarter, the tweet specifies that the team is evaluating the scope of work and the release is postponed "...until further notice."
Definitely sad news for fans of the series hoping to see Geralt on consoles at a higher fidelity and frame rate. Especially knowing that "...until further notice" can mean many things, including the possibility that it might not even happen, as there is no date given. Let's hope that's not the case.
We have decided to have our in-house development team conduct the remaining work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We are currently evaluating the scope of work to be done and thus have to postpone Q2 release until further notice. 1/2
— The Witcher (@witchergame) April 13, 2022
From a development and developer standpoint, shifting your dev team away from a core system is a lot of work. So it is possible the re-evaluation of the scope of work amounts to CD Projekt Red looking into its team's actual capacity to work on an entirely new title in an entirely new engine, along with doing a port using the old engine to new hardware.
Not a small feat in any developer's eyes. We can even add the fact that its team is also working on adding more content to Cyberpunk 2077. That is a lot to juggle when you compound it all. There is also the possibility that Poland's proximity to Ukraine may also have a little bit of influence on its decision, as it has suspended sales of its titles in Russia after all.
Though it's not all bad news for Witcher fans, as Netflix did announce approval for a new season of The Witcher TV series, and an update to the cast.
