A scorching potato: It is easy to affiliate the delay of Witcher 3’s next-gen improve with the event troubles CD Projekt Crimson has been experiencing because it launched Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020. Nonetheless, it might be resulting from elements outdoors the corporate’s management. Throughout a latest earnings name, execs tried to downplay the severity of the state of affairs.
To date, CD Projekt Crimson has solely stated that suggestions from heads of improvement triggered its choice to maneuver The Witcher 3’s improve for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection consoles to in-house improvement. Earlier than the change, Saber Interactive was answerable for manufacturing — it was additionally the studio behind the Swap port.
Though Saber is headquartered in Florida and operates studios in a number of nations, its predominant studio is in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the place improvement probably passed off. CDPR is one among many firms which reduce ties with Russia resulting from its invasion of Ukraine, and IXTB experiences that this included its relationship with Saber. The Warsaw-based firm’s choice may need merely adopted worldwide sanctions towards Russia and never resulting from improvement hassle.
Firm executives tried to ease concern over improvement progress in a Thursday monetary earnings name. Roughly one hour into the audio stream (above), improvement head Adam Badowski stated that CDPR cannot announce a brand new launch date as a result of it’s nonetheless evaluating Saber’s work, denying options they pushed it again to 2023. He confused that the corporate’s announcement does not essentially imply a prolonged delay.
At this level, it is too quickly to say how for much longer followers should wait to play The Witcher 3 with enhanced graphics. It could possibly be weeks or months. Nonetheless, CDPR made it clear that this example is not the identical because the a number of delays Cyberpunk suffered.