CD Projekt RED recently announced that the promised next-gen upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will initially be postponed indefinitely. However, the developer studio is now firmly defending itself against emerging rumors in this context.
How is the next-gen upgrade to the role-playing epic The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt really doing? That’s the question many fans are asking themselves online after it had to be postponed indefinitely from the second quarter of 2022. CD Projekt RED is now clearly defending itself against the rumors that have arisen as a result.
Michael Nowakowski, Senior Vice President of Business Development at CD Projekt RED, has caught some headlines on the web about the shift with amazement: “I’ve been looking at the headlines that have popped up here and there on the internet and one phrase really caught my attention: ‘Wichter 3 next-gen delayed indefinitely’. That sounds like the game is in some kind of development hell. I want to clarify that’s simply not the case. There have been some insinuations that we won’t see it until June now next year or something like that. That’s absolutely not the case.”
Although the studio is currently unable to name a new date, the postponement to an “indefinite period” should not be as comprehensive as many people might fear.
“The game is being finalized within the studio. We’re evaluating our timeline, which requires some investigation time – and that’s all we’re saying. Nobody’s saying the game will be delayed for a monumental amount of time. That’s what I’m currently saying can say about Witcher Next-Gen, but I just wanted to emphasize that fact.”
From the official side, the circumstances for this step are not further examined. According to a report by Kotaku’s usually well-informed colleagues, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is said to play a role, as development of the next-gen version appears to have initially been outsourced to a studio based in St. Petersburg, Russia. CD Projekt RED had previously taken stricter steps and stopped all sales of its own games in Russia; moving the next-gen development of The Witcher 3 back to European realms would only be a logical step.
Meanwhile, CD Projekt RED also reiterates that the in-house development of the upgrade will not have any negative impact on the studio’s other projects in development.
The official trailer for the second season of The Witcher on Netflix has now been released. The streaming service will start on December 17, 2021.
