CyberPunk 2077 certainly seemed like a game that was going to be released on its rescheduled release date in September 17. There were a few reasons for the fall release date feeling concrete. The first was that in early 2020, CD Projekt Red pushed the title back from its original release date of April 2020, the date Keanu Reeves gave us at E3 2019, to September 17, which is a significant, five month delay. The other reason is that during one of their last earnings calls, CD Projekt Red explained how well the team had adapted to the pandemic and working from home.

During their positive fiscal year report, management talked a little about their upcoming title. As for if the title will be delayed and how its progressing towards it September release, CEO Adam Kicinski said “since mid march we have been working from home, while ensuring continuity of all our operations. Our goals havent changed; first and foremost, we intend to release CyberPunk 2077 in September. We feel motivated and have the necessary tools at our disposal to meet this goal”

The senior VP of business development answered many questions regarding where the company stood with CyberPunk 2077 after its fiscal year report. When answering some of the written questions he noted “the game is in a complete form. It’s done and it’s all bug fixing and polishing. In terms of QA testing — its about 130-150 people working on it right now.”

However, this week CD Projekt Red, co-founder and head of studio posted to their social media news of the delay. “those of you who are familiar with the way we make games know that we wont ship something which is not ready. “Ready when its done” is not just a phrase we say because it sounds right, its something we live by even when we know we’ll take heat for it. At the same time, we are fully aware that making such a decision costs us your trust and trading trust for additional time is one of the hardest decisions a game developer can make. At the time we are writing these words, CyberPunk 2077 is finished both content and gameplay wise. The quests, the cutscenes, the skills and items; all the adventures Night City has to offer - it’s all there. But with such an abundance of content and complex systems interweaving with each other, we need to properly go through everything, balance game mechanics and fix a lot of bugs”

CD Projekt Red seemed like they would be hitting their target of late September with those earlier sentiments from upper management but the delays of CyberPunk 2077 echo that of the companies most successful release with The Witcher 3, which was announced for late 2014, then pushed to February 2015 and then finally released in May 2015. The game eventually went on to win many game of the year awards from different outlets, which shows just how valuable extra polish can be as game breaking bugs can turn you from game of the year into a meme. The delay of Cyberpunk is good news as the extra polish and bug fixing will be worth it and it will also put the release much closer to the anticipated release of the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

Whether or not it is a coincidence that the release of the game is much closer to the release of next gen, there are a few reasons why this should benefit the team. The first is that during their FY2019 report, CD Projekt Red showed a drastic increase in digital sales year on year. With Sony just unveiling a digital only PS5, and Microsoft most likely to follow suit, its clear that digital sales are about to spike meaning more money for the developers. The other benefit CP2077 might gain is that as of now there have been little to no games scheduled for the launch of these shiny new consoles, which means that people will be looking for games to play.