You would be forgiven for being dubious. Cyberpunk 2077 was originally due to come out in April 2020, and while some certified geniuses entirely correctly stated this would never happen, many were convinced. Come January the release date was enormously extended until September, then by June it was bumped to November. So in October, a surprise to staff as well as players, it was delayed until December 10. And really, who hasn’t been waiting for the next Yellow Box Of Doom to appear on developer CD Projekt Red’s Twitter feed? However, in a presentation to investors last night, it seems CDPR are finally pretty damned sure they’re going to hit this one.
With exactly two weeks until the Dec 10 release, it’d be pretty bold to have told investors it’s definitely coming out if there were still room for doubt. So presumably, maybe, possibly this time it’s going to happen? With stories of pre-patched copies leaking into the wild, and the obvious lead time necessary to ship physical copies to retail all around the world, we know it’s at least finished in terms of its plastic box form. The question is of course the day-0 patch that is presumably intended to fix all the issues that caused the most recent slip—one that took place after the game had gone gold.
CDPR aren’t aiming to release a fully optimised next-gen version of Cyberpunk until some time next year, but are releasing it for PS5 and Series X/S via backward compatibility next month, and boast performance improvements. They showed off some next-gen footage just this week, to whet appetites.
Plans are in place for an epic advertising campaign across 55 nations, and the financials make clear that the game will have ten voiced languages, and a further 18 languages subtitled. They really are acting like this is it. This time. For sure.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if there was yet another eleventh-hour delay, and my heart goes out to developers at CDPR who are presumably neck-deep in the crunch they were promised they wouldn’t have.