Following an announcement that current-generation versions of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt have once again been delayed, developer CD Projekt Red further clarified that the game isn’t in development hell.
As spotted by PC Gamer, CD Projekt Red senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski said, during an April investment call, “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. 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.”
It actually sounds like there may not be that much work left to do on the current-gen versions. During the call, CD Projekt Red joint CEO Adam Kicinski said that “not many” developers are required to finish the game, estimating that it would only need 15 or so people and some external staff. “Taking over this project will not affect the development of our next game,” Kicinski added.
“We have taken the development of the game in-house,” Nowakowski said. “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.”
Given that no new release date or release window was revealed during the call, it does mean that, technically speaking, the current-gen versions have indeed been delayed indefinitely–“something that lasts for an unspecified amount of time” is literally what indefinitely means. Regardless, we’ll just have to wait and see when The Witcher 3 will release for Xbox Series X|S and PS5.
Alongside the call, CD Projekt Red announced sales figures for The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, revealing that the former has hit 40 million units sold while the latter has hit 18 million units. CD Projekt Red has revealed “there is work to be done” when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077, announcing that its first major expansion will launch in 2023.
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