If you had hopes of playing Cyberpunk 2077 as it was meant to be played on your "next-gen" console here soon, CDPR has some bad news for you. In an incredibly brief and to the point update today, the Polish game developer announced that not only was 2077's next-gen upgrade delayed, but also the upgrade coming to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
If you'll recall, Cyberpunk 2077 launched almost a year ago now to somewhat disastrous results for gamers and the developer alike. Broken console versions plagued what was meant to be the studio's greatest work, the result of almost a decade of development, and even after multiple delays the studio still released subpar versions across the board. It was so bad that Sony even pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from sale on their in-house store, returning more than six months later.
As a result, work on the "next-gen" version of the Xbox Series consoles and PlayStation 5 was put on the backburner in order to get the current-gen versions up to an acceptable level of playability. While the PC version had issues for many players (myself included), it was the least affected of them overall. Earlier this year, CDPR released a roadmap showcasing what players could expect to see from the studio this year, slating the next-gen upgrade on the game to hit in the latter half of 2021.
IMPORTANT PRODUCTION UPDATE pic.twitter.com/KOnaIVOt4v
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 20, 2021
Well, now we know that will not happen. The next-generation upgrade of Cyberpunk 2077 is now being planned for Q1 2022, meaning it could hit sometime between the beginning of January through the end of March. Meanwhile, if you're looking forward to getting ray-tracing and more added to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you'll be waiting a little bit longer as in the same announcement it was stated that the studio is holding that till at least Q2 2022.
"We have an important update regarding the next generation updates of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for consoles and PC," the post on Twitter read this morning. "Based on recommendations supplied by teams supervising the development of both games, we decided to postpone their releases until 2022."
It'll remain to be seen whether or not CDPR can deliver on these targets, or whether or not fans will be willing to wait that long, especially those who bought Cyberpunk 2077 on their next-gen console purely for the enhancements the more powerful hardware was supposed to bring. As of now both consoles are playing Cyberpunk in backwards compatibility mode, which does offer some benefits but doesn't add to the presentation in the form of upgraded graphics or even implementing ray-tracing.
