Cyberpunk 2077 is reshaping The Witcher 4’s development strategy

Lessons learned.

Image of Cyberpunk 2077's protagonist V. This is the default look of V's female version. She has red hair, an undercut, several piercings, and is holding a pistol.
Image via CD PROJEKT RED

After a rocky start to Cyberpunk 2077, there were lessons to be learned for CD Projekt Red developers. The good news is that the team is now using their experience to ensure that subsequent releases avoid similar issues at their launch.

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In an interview on Oct. 15, Colin Walder talked about what they learned from previous releases and what will be done in the future.

After its release, several performance issues were troubling Cyberpunk 2077, mainly on older consoles such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This proved a costly problem for developers as its resolution cost around $100 million.

The developers claimed that they are learning from their mistakes and looking to improve their performance. After fans’ high expectations from the Witcher series were let down, they are looking to repair their relationship with their community.

POV from V's perspective speaking to Johnny Silverhand (Cyberpunk 2077)
CD Projekt Red is learning from Cyberpunk 2077. Screenshot by Dot Esports

To prevent this from happening again, Walder said the studio is starting with the demo test and performance runs from the early days of The Witcher 4’s development, also known as the so-called “Polaris project.” This testing will ensure that the game delivers an optimal performance for consoles, maintains stable frame rates, and prevents as many bugs as possible.

This comes as a positive change as Cyberpunk performance tests were run on consoles late in the game’s development process. This led to suboptimal performance and little time to resolve it, which affected the game’s release.

Now, The Witcher 4 will aim to deliver a good console performance, which is essential, as it will be another game released on multiple platforms, ensuring an equal experience for all players.

We have seen that CD Projekt Red is ready to learn from its mistake by releasing the 2.0 update for Cyberpunk. Now, with the lessons learned, they are working to deliver a worthy successor in The Witcher franchise.

Author
Image of Elmaz Sabovic
Elmaz Sabovic
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Covering AAA releases, indie games, and esports. Fell in love with video games at age 7, and never been the same since.