CD Projekt RED will not postpone “The Witcher 4”: the company learned a lesson from Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt RED survived the unsuccessful release of Cyberpunk 2077 and learned a lesson from it. Now the company's games will be released without postponements and only when they are ready.

At least, that's what CD Projekt RED CEO Michal Nowakowski told Eurogamer. He said that when they first announced the release date for Cyberpunk 2077 (during the same speech by Keanu Reeves at E3 2019), the company planned to release the game in a year at most. Then CP 2077 was postponed twice, and it was released six months later than expected. This played a cruel joke with the promotion of the game: CDPR simply did not have a marketing strategy for these additional six months.

Nowakowski claims that the company has learned a lot from this situation, and now they will only reveal release dates when they are completely sure of them. The director cited the Phantom Liberty DLC as a successful example of this approach.

“We learned a lot of good practices from this experience: announce a date when you're really, really sure of it. And now, I think, we have much better tools to be sure of that date, which we – on a smaller scale – proved to ourselves with Phantom Liberty.”

For the same reason, CD Projekt RED is not showing any materials about The Witcher 4 yet. They share small tidbits of information, but the full announcement will come when the time comes: “If I ask you what you know about The Witcher 4? Most likely nothing. Yes, there are theories and so on, but nothing concrete. So we want to drop bits here and there so that people – and the media in particular – can pick them up and try to understand what exactly we're trying to say this time.”

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 also brought some adjustments to the studio's workflow. Now, the development of all games is overseen by CD Projekt RED's VP of Technology, Charles Tremblay. He communicates directly with the game directors from the studio's divisions in North America and Europe, overseeing the development process and reporting to the company's senior management.