…and the Polish team is reconsidering the standalone online multiplayer of Cyberpunk 2077, whose PlayStation Store return is depending on Sony and not them.

CD Projekt RED (CDPR onwards) announced that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition is going to get a next-gen update. Geralt’s 2015 game, complete with both expansions and all the extra content, will be re-released in the second half of 2021 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC. (That’s also when Cyberpunk 2077’s next-gen patch will launch.) If you have the game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, you can update for free. It will bring „a range of visual and technical improvements—including ray tracing and faster loading times—across the base game, both expansions, and all extra content.”

CDP also announced that they acquired a Vancouver-based studio, Digital Scapes Studios, which got rebranded to CD Projekt RED Vancouver. „The well-known Digital Scapes team is our trusted partner. For three years we have been closely working together, and we trust them completely. Digital Scapes have put in a great deal of work during the making of Cyberpunk 2077, assisting with the development of the game and optimizing its various features. In addition to contributing to our projects, the new team will help us perfect our technologies and will broaden our competencies in this respect. We believe that the hugely talented Digital Scapes crew is the perfect foundation upon which to build a wider CD Projekt RED Vancouver team,” said CD Projekt RED head of production and CTO Pawel Zawodny in a press release.

„We are very excited to join a studio that forges the incredibly engaging, vastly scoped experiences, such as The Witcher trilogy and Cyberpunk 2077. We believe our contribution in the area of gameplay and technology can make them even more captivating. Being a Polish Canadian, I take great satisfaction in building bridges between the Canadian and Polish game development industries. This is a great opportunity for Canadian developers to get involved with CD Projekt RED’s incredible IP and for CD Projekt RED to tap into Canada’s deep talent pool and game-making craft,” CD Projekt RED Vancouver studio head Marcin Chudy added. The studio joins CDPR’s Warsaw, Krakow, and Wroclaw teams.

CDPR published a new strategy update video, and in it, Adam Kiciński, the joint CEO of CDP, said that they will reconsider its planned standalone Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer experience as part of a more agile approach to game development. „Previously we hinted that our next triple-A would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game, but we have decided to reconsider this plan. Given our new, more systematic and agile approach, instead of primarily focusing on one big online experience or game, we are focusing on bringing online into all of our franchises one day. We are building an online technology that can be seamlessly integrated into the development of our future games,” Kiciński said.

It doesn’t mean they will change what they mainly develop: „CD Projekt Red makes single-player, story-driven, triple-A RPGs. That is not changing. What is changing is our long-term approach to online. By this, we mean ensuring we are properly prepared to implement online elements in our games where they make sense. We don’t have to go overboard or lose our single-player DNA. We want to take thoughtful steps to build robust online capabilities,” he added. They will have shorter marketing campaigns (a game will be announced much closer to its release date), focus even more on the health of the dev teams, and concentrate on parallel AAA game development.

Michał Nowakowski, CDPR’s senior vice president of business development, talked about Cyberpunk 2077’s chances of returning to the PlayStation Store: „We have published several patches. We have just published a really big one yesterday and we have published several hotfixes. Every one of them brings us closer to going back to the PSN store. However, the final decision, you have to understand, belongs to Sony. We do believe we’re closer than further, but of course, the final call is theirs, so let’s wait and see.” Indeed: 1.2 is a huge update.

We’ll see how serious they are about all this.

Source: Gematsu, Gematsu, PCGamer, PSL