Confirmed: The Witcher’s home console versions “on hold”

April 29, 2009

Some of yesterday’s speculation about the fate of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) has crossed over into the realm of fact. Developer Widescreen Games has confirmed that development for the console versions of The Witcher have indeed been put on hold.

The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf - Image 1

The development of the game The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf has been suspended in an attempt to resolve financial problems among the various project partners. We regret this measure, particularly on behalf of the fans who were impatiently awaiting the release of the game. I hope that we can find an amicable solution with our present and former partners involved in this ambitious project.

Masclef that the “financial problems” here arose from a missed payment by CD Projekt. He also noted that the hold order was helped along after “not being covered financially on it for three months.”

For their part, CD Projekt joint CEO Michal Kicinski claimed that they paid Widescreen on time for all milestones. He did admit that the payments were “later than originally planned”, but this was due to delays on Widescreen’s part. Furthermore,

The most important fact is that development process didnÂ’t make planned release date possible and moreover propositions of the new release date were changing few times. Besides the schedule, technical incapability created a risk of missing planned quality which is absolutely unacceptable. And this brought an end in our cooperation with WSG.

Kicinski also noted that game quality is a non-negotiable aspect for them and that they will be doing what they can to find a solution for Rise of the White Wolf‘s current situation.