A collective groan is heard throughout social media, but no one is really surprised.

CD Projekt RED, remember them? The jolly hard-working Polish folk who had all the goodwill from gamers a dev could ever ask for? Ambitious, innovative, and extremely punctual in their succession of award-winning Witcher 3 related releases.

Well, whoever those people were their long gone – or burnt out – because this version of the once adored games company has lost all its confidence in delivering on its much-hyped promises.

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most anticipated titles of all time, didn’t so much release as free-fall through the gaming world last Christmas, crashing most of our games consoles in a twisted mess of grotesque graphics and ball-aching bugs. The PC version was at least playable, but the game was far from finished (or indeed, fully realised) on any platform.

One year on much has improved via a succession of patches, but given previous form, not to the level many would have hoped.

One such area of glaring omission has been the lack of a next-gen version of Cyberpunk, a feature that would seem essential to a lot of gamers who’ve forked out hundreds of pounds on their henched new games machines. Despite a straightforward PC port with a few tweaks being the logical and seemingly simple thing to do – especially given all modern consoles and PCs share the same basic architecture – no such version has yet surfaced.

A modest target of Christmas 2021 was initially set and sadly will now be missed, as the release has been put back to quarter 1 2022.

CD Projekt confirmed the news in this tweet:

As a double-whammy of disappointment, the pleasant surprise that a next-gen Witcher 3 release was also being worked on (fast load times, ray-tracing etc.) and scheduled for this year has also been delayed, as far as quarter 2 2022. Big bummer.

What the hell is is going on here??

Given the speed with which enthusiastic modders continue to create reams of compelling content, graphics enhancements and bug fixes for both of these games on PC, it seems bizarre that the once mighty and efficient CD Projekt cannot get its act together to accomplish what should be fairly straightforward upgrades to these their most recent titles.

Given all the problems with crunch work practices and bad management decisions that were widely reported around the disastrous Cyberpunk 2077 launch, however, we’re not surprised by the news, and nor is the wider gaming community.

But fret not, if you’re a PC gamer (as you should be) you’re not really missing out on anything. In fact, the modders might make improvements designed for next-gen consoles completely redundant by getting there months ahead of our poor stressed-out Polish friends.