Why The Witcher 3's next-gen delay is more to do with 'new vision' rather than 'development hell'

The Witcher 3 is one of the many games that's yet to receive a next-gen upgrade to make it ready for modern-day consoles. With Cyberpunk 2077 recently getting a next-gen upgrade, fans' hopes were quite high.

It's one of the main reasons some of them have been disappointed with the recent news of CD Projekt Red delaying its release. However, there has been more light on the issue over the possible reason for the delay.

The Witcher 3 has been one of the best games ever made. Aside from great gameplay, the game has stunning graphics. The target for CD Projekt is to enhance the game and make it update with the times. While many felt that there may have been significant problems, it has now turned out that the exact case is different.

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Senior CD Projekt Red personnel explain the reason for the delay in The Witcher 3's next-gen upgrade

A week back, CD Projekt Red announced a delay for the next-gen upgrade of The Witcher 3. Not much was said except that there will be updates in the future. Quite naturally, there have been speculations of major delays on social media.

In response to such speculations, the studio's senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski has informed investors of the potential reason.

As reported by PC Gamer, it now appears that there might not be a major delay. The possible reason seems to be a change in vision as CD Projekt Red now wants to complete the work in-house.

"I've been looking at the headlines that popped up here and there over the internet, and I've seen one that 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's statement points to the fact that there are no issues related to the scale of development of the next-gen upgrade. The decision seems to be based on a vision change.

Earlier, the next-gen port was being made externally, from which CD Projekt Red has decided to shift. The exact reason for the decision is unknown, but it seems that the delay won't be a major one. If anything, it will allow the developers to reassess their timeline and gauge when there could be a potential release.

"Everything we're saying is—we have taken the development of the game in-house. The game is going to be finished 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 emphasize that fact."

CD Projekt Red joint CEO Adam Kicinski also added that not much work is left, and taking on the additional task won't be a problem for their future projects.

"Taking over this project will not affect the development of our next game."

New targets and deadlines haven't been discussed. However, it would appear that the change in plan is to do with how the studio feels. While some details are unknown, it seems that the shift isn't to do with a development hell, like many thought.

It will be interesting to see how long CD Projekt Red takes to release the next-gen version of The Witcher 3. It's set to arrive on all three platforms, with PC players about to get free upgrades.