In brief: CD Projekt Red said major upgrades designed to bring Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 to current-gen consoles won't arrive until next year. This confirms previous suspicions and compounds the problems the company has faced since launching the former title.
In an update on its investor page and later from its Twitter account, CD Projekt Red made the announcement that its planned full current-generation upgrade of Cyberpunk 2077 for PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles won't arrive until the first quarter of next year. A similar upgrade for The Witcher 3 is coming in the second quarter of 2022. Both were always planned to be free for current owners of each game.
Even before Cyberpunk 2077 was released, CDPR had confirmed it planned to initially launch the game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with full current-gen upgrades coming later. In September, the company said it was hopeful the upgrades for both games would arrive before the end of 2021, but couldn't guarantee it.
Remember this roadmap?
Cyberpunk 2077 was criticized partially because of its disappointing performance on PS4 and Xbox One, to the point where it was removed from the PlayStation Store for months, only being allowed back on after several patches. In 2020, the developer ended up refunding hundreds of thousands of copies. After returning to the PlayStation Store, Cyberpunk 2077 topped the charts for June 2021.
Cyberpunk's development was hit with multiple delays before release, initially planned for April of 2020, then September, and finally December. Despite the company promising it would avoid putting the development staff to work under crunch hours, this still ended up happening in the run-up to launch. After the controversial launch, a Bloomberg story in January analyzed what happened during development, in which CDPR staff members said Cyberpunk's original release timeline was unrealistic. Ironically, at least one staff member expected the game to be fully ready in 2022, which is when the current-gen update is now scheduled to arrive.
CDPR announced the current-gen Witcher 3 upgrade in September 2020. Developed externally by Saber Interactive, which handled Witcher 3's Nintendo Switch port, this upgrade is supposed to improve graphics with features like ray tracing, include all the DLC, and come with new retail editions for PS5 and Xbox Series. It will also include new DLC inspired by Netflix's Witcher series. The developer of a popular texture mod is collaborating on the official upgrade, which will also arrive on PC.
Recently, PEGI and ESRB ratings had appeared for the game on PS5 and Xbox Series, making many hopeful the upgrade would arrive sooner rather than later.