CD Projekt RED’s newest quarterly financial results claim Cyberpunk 2077’s and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s next-gen versions are progressing according to their plans, meaning another delay is unlikely to happen.
Cyberpunk 2077‘s next significant update, 1.5, will launch simultaneously with the PlayStation 5/Xbox Series version (Q1 2022; January-March). The Witcher 3, however, is an older game, and its new ports are handled by Saber Interactive (previously responsible for its Switch port as well). The studio is now focusing on improving its technology to include ray tracing, for example. But let’s hear Adam Kiciński, CD Projekt RED’s president:
“As I said during the presentation, the development of both next-gen games is on track to meet their targeted dates. With Cyberpunk 2077, we’re currently at the test stage, so we have to be sure that what we are releasing is in very, very good shape, and this requires substantial effort since the next-generation version includes graphical updates exploiting the potential of the new consoles along with a set of system-level improvements. I’m talking about systems that are general to the game, not a revolution, but still, they can interact with other systems, so we have to be sure that there is no regression whatsoever, and mainly for this, we need some extra time for testing.
With The Witcher 3 next-gen, the situation is a bit different. The next-gen version is being developed by our trusted partner Saber Interactive, collaborating with us. As The Witcher 3 was initially released almost seven years ago, of course, technology has rapidly advanced since then. New solutions have emerged, some of which the original game was lacking, like ray tracing. This is a purely technical update. There is a small pack of DLCs, but we are mainly working on technical things, and as we are talking about new technologies that need to be applied to the relatively old game, it turned out that we need a bit more time for this technical task,” Kiciński said.
He also talked about why Cyberpunk 2077 will not be on Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now: “We always consider any business opportunity, but this kind of subscription model is good at a certain moment of the life cycle of the product, so not too early. The Witcher 3 was available for some time with those subscriptions, but we have to weigh the benefit and cost each time, we have to compare it to sales, so it’s rather a decision based on data. It’s way too early for Cyberpunk 2077.” The game is getting an expansion, but no details (and no release window) were provided.
The studio confirmed that both The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises would get multiplayer: “We are planning to add multiplayer functionality in the future to both franchises, including Cyberpunk, gradually. The first attempt will be something we can learn from and then add more and more, so step by step, we want to open doors to multiplayer, but to add some multiplayer functionalities gradually.” So no details on who’s going first.
At least they aren’t too overly confident.
