The Witcher 3 remains an absolute behemoth seven years on from its launch, and with the open world action RPG having now sold over 40 million units worldwide, it’s clear that the demand for the game hasn’t subsided. CD Projekt RED announced native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the title in 2020, but recently ended up delaying its launch from Q2 2022 to an undetermined date, while also making the announcement that the remainder of the project had been shifted in-house at CDPR.
That said, for those concerned about how big of a delay that’s going to be and what the state of the project is, the Polish developer has provided assurances that it’s not a “monumental” delay. Speaking during CD Projekt’s recent earnings call (via PC Gamer), senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski said that while the game’s indefinite delay might suggest development troubles, the project is not in development hell. As per Nowakowski, CDPR is simply taking the time to assess the work that’s required on the game’s next-gen version now that it has moved in-house, and that the delay isn’t going to be a massive one.
“I’ve been looking at the headlines that popped up here and there over the internet, and I’ve seen one that really drew my attention, which is, ‘Witcher 3 next-gen delayed indefinitely,’ which sounds like the game is in some sort of development hell,” Nowakowski said. “I want to state this is not the fact. There’s been a lot of insinuations that we’re going to launch, like, June next year or something like that. That’s completely not the case.
“Everything we’re saying is—we have taken the development of the game in-house. The game is going to be finished in-house. We’re evaluating our time, that requires a bit of investigation—that’s all we’re saying. Nobody’s saying the game is delayed [with] some monumental time gap ahead of us. That’s as much as I can say about Witcher next-gen, but I really want to emphasize that fact.”
Nowakowski also went on to add that the port isn’t going to require too many developers to work on it, and that the project “will not affect the development” of The Witcher 4 (or whatever it ends up being called),which was recently confirmed to be in early development.
CD Projekt RED is currently also working on an expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, which is due out sometime in 2023, the studio recently announced.