While many games have already been delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, with development studios transitioning to a work-from-home environment; TrackMania, Death Stranding, Wasteland 3, and EVERSPACE 2, to name a few. But we are all watching with laser eyed interest on arguably the most anticipated game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, to see how this may affect it's September 17th release date.
Cyberpunk 2077 has already seen a huge release delay, being pushed back from a March release to the current launch date, giving us a total of 5 extra months of waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to endure. Arrrgghhhhh, just hook me up to the Matrix now please. And of course this delay happened prior to the pandemic locking us all down. So of course, today we want to explore what everyone thinks to the question: Will Cyberpunk 2077 be delayed again due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Despite being able to work remotely, the type of orchestration that is required to pull off a project of this size and scope is a massive undertaking to say the least, and is, of course, a major reason as to why people work in shared spaces together; to share knowledge quickly and easily and to solve problems and build things together as a team. Once that becomes limited things will have to move more slowly.
On the other side, perhaps CD Projekt Red is such a well oiled development machine that they can easily do this type of stuff remotely? Maybe they always work with a high percentage of their developers working from home? With a number of studio locations perhaps they regularly do conference video calls to keep their teams working in unison. CDPR aren't new to development, and developers know tech right? So obviously we want to believe these guys have got this. Plus, if all they need now is time to polish the game, they could patch Cyberpunk 2077 after release in regular waves, like Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord's release (although that is an early access game, but has done very well).
But if we take a peak at history, the Witcher 3 was notoriously delayed twice, from a release date at the end of 2014, to early 2015, then again to mid 2015. This was even after the developers already said that there wouldn’t be another delay after the first one (we cant help but think about when CDPR said to us that they’re still on track for Cyberpunk 2077’s release date). Then again, studios and developers can learn from previous experiences, and the fact that they’re using this time to only finish polishing up the game must be a good sign. So perhaps we won’t see any more Cyberpunk 2077 delays and it will release on September 17th as they have planned.
But then we are back to the fact that they did say "they were on track for September" before the current COVID-19 pandemic. And the type of finely honed orchestration that must be involved in pulling a world stopping game together like Cyberpunk 2077, is likely going to need lots of intricate collaboration, which probably needs a bunch of smart people crammed into an office together. So unless the developers at CD Projekt Red are wizards (which I wouldn’t exactly disbelieve) and can predict the future, I’d say it threw at least a tiny wrench in the works for them. So maybe we’ll see only another delay by a month, just like what happened with Death Stranding, or Wasteland 3. Then again, we could see a bigger delay of several months once again.
So do you think Cyberpunk 2077 is still on track to release on September 17th? Or will there be another delay? And if so, how long do you think it will be? Let’s debate!
