Cyberpunk 2077’s chaotic launch required extensive upgrades in quality checks for Witcher 4.
Cyberpunk 2077 is at an amazing point right now; I myself recently made the plunge and am having an absolutely marvelous time! Of course, we all recognize that today’s version is far superior to its initial release in December 2020.
CD Projekt RED invested an eye-watering $120 million to save Cyberpunk 2077 and it paid dividends, according to many fans who point to Phantom Liberty expansion’s exceptional quality as evidence of more time being given for development of Cyberpunk 2077 itself and subsequent updates, like 2.0 update which many are hailing as one of greatest ever made (it already outsells The Witcher 3 in sales! ). All this bodes well for Cyberpunk 2077’s successor Project Orion as well as positive signs about The Witcher 4 development as potential.
PCGamesN has reported that CDPR developers are revamping their internal quality checks before the release of The Witcher 4 so as to avoid repeating Cyberpunk 2077’s mistakes. Cyberpunk 2077 engineering director Colin Walder recently discussed this at Inven Game Conference where he said, “Our approach, working production-wise while creating demos and moving towards an agile mindset and workflow was about making sure certain issues weren’t missed from the get-go.”
“Take consoles; we must ensure their functionality from day one.” He went on to mention how they run demos and internal reviews with Polaris already running demos and internal reviews from early development stages compared with Cyberpunk which only adopted this step later on in development.
Maintaining morale after release was indeed a challenge given all the difficulties we encountered; morale took a substantial hit as is evident by acknowledgement of what occurred and commitment to make change; words cannot do the trick alone.” Actions speak louder than words!
“To show commitment, one needs to demonstrate it. For instance, when deadlines looming are approaching we could suggest finding ways to adjust schedule or approach this differently instead. Once this becomes an accepted practice and teams see genuine effort made at preventing crunch it begins to rebuild trust and morale – people need to see this firsthand to believe.”
CDPR’s main priority since releasing Phantom Liberty has been developing The Witcher 4. As there’s currently no set release window for The Witcher 4, their efforts are currently focused on this title.
