Gamers have been waiting for the new installment in the “The Witcher” series for a long time now, and just as it was coming close to a release, CD Projekt Red decided to make a disappointing announcement. Apparently, the game will not see its originally planned release in February, and will hit the market on May 19th instead. This was revealed in an official announcement by the company addressed to their community, in which they also gave some brief explanation about the situation.
Apparently, the game’s complexity is the main culprit here. It’s no secret that CD Projekt Red like to put a serious layer of polish on their products, and the previous two games in the franchise were indeed quite deep and complicated. According to the company’s statement, they see this release as extremely important, mostly because they realize how much the community values the new game – and so they want to make it as perfect as possible, and need extra time for the additional polish.
In addition, the company admits that they have been too hasty in their original decision about the game’s release date, and failed to see that it would be unrealistic. It’s not known if they actually ran into a specific issue during the later stages of the game’s development, or if the delay was the result of a long-accumulating list of smaller setbacks, but in any case, the studio will need an additional twelve weeks to give the game the polish it requires.
On one hand, any fan would be disappointed by the additional wait. On the other, three months is a really tiny price to pay for a product of this magnitude, if it turns out to be executed properly. There are lots of things to keep under control in a game as complex as this, and it’s good to see that CD Projekt Red realize the importance of properly polishing their game before release, instead of rushing to get it out by the date they’ve specified originally. The latter trend is particularly noticeable with games scheduled around holidays.
Because many other studios certainly choose to go that way and have no qualms about it – even ones working on much larger budgets than CD Projekt Red. And in almost all of these cases, the result is as to be expected – failure and disappointment. Some companies have realized early on that when it comes to such a situation, fans will be disappointed no matter what decision the company makes – but it’s much better to have them disappointed because they will wait a little longer, than because they’ve waited for something that didn’t meet their expectations.