CD Projekt Red boss believes Cyberpunk 2077 cost developer fans, pins hopes on The Witcher 4

CD Projekt Red's co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has admitted that the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 cost the developer fans, saying that he understands it "lost the faith of some people indefinitely," but hopes that it can win some of them back with The Witcher 4, or whatever they release after that.

It's fair to see that Cyberpunk 2077 had one of the most difficult game launches ever. With hype around the game at an extremely high level, fans ended up with a buggy mess that was poorly optimized. In fact, the game was in such a bad state that the PS4 version had to be pulled from the PlayStation Store so CDPR could work on fixing it.

CD Projekt Red did eventually turn things around and spent the profits made from the original release of the single-player game on fixing it. Now, it's in a great place, and a game I highly recommend to anyone who has never played it, or who packed it in when the release debacle happened.

Five years on, and gaming fans around the world are getting hyped for The Witcher 4, but while we're all looking towards the future, Nowakowski still has one eye on the past, explaining to Jörg Tittel in Edge's Knowledge newsletter that he's "not 100 percent convinced [they] went through the full redemption arc."

As reported by GamesRadar, Nowakowski called Cyberpunk 2077's release "heartbreaking," and felt that it had damaged the company's biggest asset - its reputation. "I'm convinced we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that's a fair thing," he continued. "I do hope we will be able to make it back - if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next."

For now, The Witcher 4 has no release window, so we have no idea when we'll get our hands on it. We do know that CDPR has decided that the game is console-first, though, blaming Cyberpunk's launch woes for the decision. We do know, however, that the game will focus on Ceri, a big departure for the series.

For Nowakowski, keeping the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in his mind throughout this development project may be both a blessing and a curse. While the fear of a repeat may loom large, he should also keep in mind that the 2.0 update for the game really turned it around, and the Phantom Liberty expansion was a success both critically and with fans. There's a balance between the two, and if CD Projekt Red can find it, we could be onto a winner with The Witcher 4.