Having announced that a successor to The Witcher 3 is under development, CD Projekt has now stated that the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrades of the said game have been hit with a delay. First announced in September 2020, these next-gen upgrades were originally supposed to land in the second half of 2021 but the continuing woes related to Cyberpunk 2077 had supposedly delayed it into the second quarter of 2022.
CD Projekt has now confirmed that it won’t be adhering to that release period as well. The reason for the same is that the company has decided to move the production of Witcher 3’s next-gen versions in-house. Saber Interactive had been working on it so far, having also worked on the Switch release of the same game.
“We’ll update you as soon as we can,” read a Twitter post by the studio regarding the new release date for the upgrade. Whenever it does arrive, it is expected to offer faster loading times, ray tracing support and all previously released DLC to players. The next-gen editions of the game will be offered as free downloads for those who own its previous-gen copies and also be sold separately for those who don’t.
It was only in February this year that Cyberpunk 2077 got its much-awaited next-gen patch. The game had suffered from a terrible launch that had led to the publisher offering refunds to disgruntled buyers. All versions of this game are now very much playable, which is probably what has convinced the in-house development team to take The Witcher 3’s development away from Saber Interactive and into their own hands.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for news regarding the next iteration of The Witcher series, all we know so far is that it will be developed on Unreal Engine 5.