CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 And Witcher 3 Next-Gen Updates Delayed

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By Brandon Hill
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Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen update is delayed until Q1 2022.

Cyberpunk 2077
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

Any chances of seeing the next-generation console and PC updates for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2021 have been officially shut down by developer CD Projekt Red. The devs took to Twitter to reveal that the updates are delayed until 2022 "based on recommendations" provided by the teams supervising the games.

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, the next-generation update is postponed until Q1 2022. As for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, gamers can expect to see the update land during Q2 2022. The CD Projekt Red dev team ended the brief tweet status update with, "Apologies for the extended wait, but we want to make it right." 

CD Project Red originally planned to make visually improved versions of Cyberpunk 2077 for the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 available during the latter half of 2021. CD Projekt Red was adamant about this timeframe as recently as early September. 

Still, it did provide this caveat at the time, stating, "keeping in mind the lessons we have learned during the past year, and taking into account the fact that this project still remains in development, we can't say with full certainty that the production schedule will not change, of course."

In other words, CD Projekt Red doesn't want another repeat of what happened with Cyberpunk 2077. While the game had already been delayed multiple times -- to the dismay of fans that had been waiting years for its arrival -- CD Projekt Red decided to release the game early in a woefully incomplete state.

The sheer number of bugs, crashes and poor visual quality on previous generation consoles (and PCs) resulted in a gamer revolt. Cyberpunk 2077 is a much more stable game nearly a year after launch, following several large patches and minor ones in-between. And gamers that were initially reticent to purchase the game have been able to pick it up in the bargain bin for as low as $9.99 in recent months at retailers like Best Buy.

As for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, its now-delayed release will include visual updates, all previously released expansion packs and "extra items inspired by the Netflix series."

Hopefully, CD Projekt Red will be able to stick by its revised 2022 launch schedules for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. Ideally, the devs won't bow to outside pressure and release them in an unfinished state if these new timeframes end up closing in too fast.

Brandon Hill
Brandon Hill

Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sizzling
    “Ups” really?
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    "Next-gen" really? Consoles that are out for almost a year now.
    (Of course nobody can get them so I guess next-gen is kinda correct)
    Reply
  • alceryes
    Damn. I was really looking forward to trying out the new ray tracing in The Witcher 3 this year.
    It'll be interesting to see how the enhanced textures of TW3 Next-Gen compare to the enhanced texture mods already out for TW3. Supposedly, "HalkHogan" (the creator if the HD Reworked Project mods) is working on the textures for the Next Gen release. Whether it's just a copy of what's already out or a further tweak/update remains to be seen.
    Reply
  • emike09
    Q2 2022 for TW3? Seriously? The game's been done for a long time, pretty much bug-free at this point. All they're doing is updating the visuals and adding some minor DLC. Crytek was even able to update the entire Crysis trilogy with RT, DLSS, and other visual updates. The delay seems overkill, especially when they're working with content that modders have had available for a long time. Really disappointed, I was looking forward to re-playing TW3 over the long, dark, cold winter months.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    emike09 said:
    Q2 2022 for TW3? Seriously? The game's been done for a long time, pretty much bug-free at this point. All they're doing is updating the visuals and adding some minor DLC. Crytek was even able to update the entire Crysis trilogy with RT, DLSS, and other visual updates. The delay seems overkill, especially when they're working with content that modders have had available for a long time. Really disappointed, I was looking forward to re-playing TW3 over the long, dark, cold winter months.
    It's even worse when the base software is that clean : a port will always require some parts of the code to be re-worked, which WILL trigger existing but hidden bugs on top of adding new bugs - making the new software look worse than the original. So they will have to spend even more time on QA.
    Remember Warcraft 3? Try and imagine a re-release of TW3 with even a quarter of the bugs WC3:R had - the backlash would probably kill a small company like CDPR.
    As for Cyberpunk 2077, they're not even fully done cleaning up the original game - I'm pretty sure fixing all the original bugs entailed taking some programming shortcuts, shims and quick patches that will require cleaning up before even being able to start on the port itself.
    Reply