'Cyberpunk 2077' Release Date: Developer Explains Lengthy Development Time

One of the big surprises of E3 2018 was the reveal of Cyberpunk 2077. Since its first teaser in 2013, gamers wanted to learn more about the game, especially when it will come out. A new interview with the developers doesn’t give a date of when the game will come out, but it does give an idea of why it’s taking so long.

Kotaku’s Jason Schreier interviewed Marcin Iwiński, the co-founder and co-CEO of CD Projekt Red, at E3 2018 for the site’s Splitscreen podcast released on Monday. In the interview, Iwiński talks about the development process for Cyberpunk 2077 while trying to not reveal that much about the process. When asked if the game had to be “rebooted” during development, he confirms but offers some explanation on why it happened.

“Yeah… But first of all, what does it mean to change direction, reboots,” Iwiński told Schreier. “It is a creative process which is based on iteration. If we don’t like something, we have no problem saying, ‘OK, we have to redo this part.’ It can mean we are throwing away six months of work, and there were bits and pieces happening like that.”

Schreier asked Iwiński multiple times about the release date for Cyberpunk 2077, but received no straight answer from him although Iwiński somewhat confirmed that approximately 400 people are working on the game. As for the game’s release date, the current hypothesis is June 2019. A thread on the video game forum NeoGaf from March 2017 suggested that time window as that is the end of a project timeline CD Projekt Red gave for its projects, which are partially funded by the governmen of Poland where the studio is located.

CD Projekt Red is known for taking its times with games, but if the Witcher series is any indication that time is well spent. Gamers will find out for themselves whenever Cyberpunk 2077 is released.

Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t the only surprise at Microsoft’s E3 press event. The Xbox company also announced a new Halo and Gears of War game.