The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 Delayed on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S Until 2022

Those who own a Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X|S have enjoyed playing next-gen ports of games that came out in the last few years. Unfortunately, neither The Witcher 3 nor Cyberpunk 2077 will be coming to PS5 or Xbox Series X|S until 2022.

This depressing news comes courtesy of developer CD Projekt Red. They took to Twitter to set the record straight on future ports of these popular titles:

IMPORTANT PRODUCTION UPDATE pic.twitter.com/KOnaIVOt4v
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 20, 2021

According to CDPR, the delays are based on recommendations of the teams supervising the development of these games. Thanks to these recommendations, we won’t see next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 until Q1 2022 and The Witcher 3 until Q2 2022.

However, these delays may not be news to those who closely follow CD Projekt Red. On a shareholders results call at the beginning of last month, the devs casually mentioned that they could not guarantee next-gen releases for these games before 2021 is over (via a VGC transcript).

Reading between the lines, it also seems obvious that they want these console ports to land with a major splash. Considering that the original PS4 release of Cyberpunk 2077 was yanked from the PlayStation Store amid waves of customers demanding refunds, we can only hope the company avoids a similar debacle in 2022.

Of course, Cyberpunk 2077 did eventually return to the PlayStation Store this past June, and CD Projekt Red has made many quiet improvements to the game. Next-gen offers a chance to make further improvements. For example, their next-gen version of The Witcher 3 will be a Complete Edition that includes the Blood and Wine and the Hearts of Stone expansions as well as added graphical enhancements, ray tracing, and reduced loading times.

Do you think the next-gen versions of these games will be the definitive way to play them? Be sure to sound off in the comments below!