Following an announcement by CDPR via Twitter, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt looks to be on track for a holiday release.
The release has been met with a bout of delays and was last expected to arrive this coming June, but an abrupt shift late in development was caused by CDPR moving their entire project from a third-party studio, in-house. At the time, much to many fans’ chagrin, the game was delayed indefinitely and many rumours across the internet suggested the game was ‘in development hell.’
CDPR was quick to dismiss such claims. During an investors call last month CD Projekt’s senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski made a point of saying “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,” Nowakowski said.
Thankfully, reasonable doubt can be thrown to the wayside. A recent Tweet coinciding with the game’s seven-year anniversary revealed the welcome news that its current-gen update is planned to release in Q4 2022.
The long-awaited upgrade will feature enhanced features such as raytraced lighting, faster load times, updated textures, and higher refresh rates. Such niceties will be available on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, while existing PC players will also receive a free update to the game.
It’s been a tumultuous episode over at CDPR, but hard work and dedication by the team has allowed it to stay above criticism, Cyberpunk 2077 has received continuous updates and is thankfully miles ahead of its original release, which was met with tons of backlash for its poor state on last-gen consoles. The Witcher 4 is also currently in development and a collaboration with Epic will see it among the first AAA titles to be developed on Unreal Engine 5.
Hopefully Geralt of Rivia’s infamous quote, “Hmm,” is one of approval, and no further delays scupper CDPR’s Q4 plans.
