It is almost an understatement to say that CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 game is 'highly anticipated'. This upcoming game from the team behind the critically acclaimed The Witcher series has not only the gaming public under its spell, mega-tech corporations like Microsoft, and Nvidia have felt the need to create special edition hardware tributes for the game. Perhaps they were even willing to tweak their hardware release schedules to coincide with this game's release.
Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed at least once previously. In January this year we learned that it would be delayed from the previously touted April release date by almost half a year, until 17th September 2020. At the time the developer said that the game was "complete and playable," but because of the size and complexity of the project extra time was needed to "finish playtesting, fixing and polishing". It asked for gamers to be patient while it endeavoured to "make the game perfect".
The appeal for time to polish the game was hard to grumble about, especially when the most vocal gamers often complain about firms rushing out titles in an incomplete state, full of bugs. However, this particular news bolt has struck twice now, and you can see CDPR's official statement and reasoning here (and embedded below), on its Twitter account.
This time around CDPR is doubling down on its 'won't ship it until it's done' philosophy. The reasoning is pretty much the same as given back in January - i.e. the game is finished content and gameplay-wise - "it's all there". However, being such a complicated project, more time is required to pore over everything, especially the complex interweaving nature of the game and Night City. In particular, balancing tasks and bug fixes will be under the spotlight during the extra two months before release, says CDPR.
Perhaps the news that the Night City Wire preview event is still scheduled for 25th June might soften the blow a bit. Furthermore, CDPR isn't going to hide away the game from professional reviewers until after it has launched. It says that "this week, journalists from all over the world are starting to independently play the game." We will be able to read / watch these reviews after the Night City Wire event a week from now.
Some readers might be slightly worried about what the Cyberpunk 2077 delay might mean to Nvidia's GeForce Ampere graphics cards launch plans. Hopefully, both Nvidia and AMD will continue to target a September launch for their exciting new GPUs.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now scheduled to be released for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Google Stadia on 19th Nov. That is nearer to the time we are expecting the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 to become available - but next-gen gamers might have to wait a bit longer for their enhanced editions to be released.
