‘The Witcher 3’ studio says current-gen upgrade not in “development hell”

CD Projekt Red has promised that the current-gen upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt isn’t in “development hell”, shortly after it delayed the release.

Yesterday (April 14) it was announced that the planned current-gen upgrade for The Witcher 3 wouldn’t be coming in the second quarter of 2022, after originally being announced in early 2020. No new release window was given at the time.

Speaking in a sales call a few hours later, CD Projekt’s senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski promised that the update wouldn’t face a substantial delay and shut down rumours of developer issues.

“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,” Nowakowski said.

We have decided to have our in-house development team conduct the remaining work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We are currently evaluating the scope of work to be done and thus have to postpone Q2 release until further notice. 1/2

— The Witcher (@witchergame) April 13, 2022

“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.”

He went on to reiterate that all the studio has done is take development of the game 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 emphasise that fact.”

Later on in the call, CD Projekt joint CEO Adam Kicinski said “not many” developers are required to complete the project before adding: “Taking over this project will not affect the development of our next game.”

The current-gen Witcher 3 delay was confirmed alongside the news that CD Projekt Red would be taking development in-house, with the Russian branch of Saber Interactive previously working on the project.

In other news, it’s been revealed that gamers and gaming companies have donated over £150million (nearly $200million USD) to Ukraine’s humanitarian efforts, with Epic Games and Microsoft donating the most.