Cyberpunk 2077 development at full speed, but still not playable at E3 2019

By Aaron Mamiit Published May 26, 2019

CD Projekt Red is “proceeding at full speed” with the development of Cyberpunk 2077, but the highly anticipated game will not yet be ready for the public at E3 2019.

“The development of our next flagship game — Cyberpunk 2077 — is proceeding at full speed, with over 400 people currently involved in the project,” said CD Projekt Red’s CFO Piotr Nielubowicz in the company’s latest quarterly report. He added that E3 2019 is the “most important” one in the developer’s history.

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More information about Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to be revealed at E3 2019, as CD Projekt Red will have a dedicated E3 Coliseum panel. However, this does not mean that attendees will be able to try the game out. The developer’s global community lead, Marcin Momot, confirmed on Twitter that in the gameplay presentations planned for the annual event, it will be the developers themselves playing the game.

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CD Projekt Red President Adam Kicinski, meanwhile, dropped some hints about Cyberpunk 2077 during the developer’s quarterly earnings call. One of the questions that came up was whether the game will have a version for virtual reality.

“As for VR — technically speaking, it is not terribly difficult to add support for it,” Kicinski said. However, he said that the current focus in development is on the PC and console versions of the game, and while it appears that there are no plans for taking Cyberpunk 2077 into virtual reality, the door is not completely closed.

Kicinski was also asked one of the most important questions surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 — its release date, and whether that information will be revealed at E3 2019. Interestingly, Kicinski did not shoot down the possibility.

“Sorry, but we cannot say that — I mean, we can neither confirm nor deny this,” Kicinski said to answer the question. This opens up the chance that the Cyberpunk 2077 release will finally be revealed at E3 2019, though the final confirmation will not happen until two weeks from now when the annual event kicks off.

CD Projekt Red said November last year that it is looking to release Cyberpunk 2077 with the same quality as Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2, not like its own The Witcher 3 that was plagued with launch bugs that took three months to fix with patches. This may be why the developer is taking so long to reveal a definite release date for the game.

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The future of E3 is in question again as ESA reportedly seeks a 2025 reinvention

The future of the once popular video game industry expo E3 is once again in question as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) ended its partnership with ReedPop, the company that was helping it revitalize the event.

ReedPop is the company that runs events like PAX, EGX, and C2E2, and the ESA had brought them on board to help reimagine the in-person experience at E3. This was supposed to start with E3 2023, but it ended up being canceled a couple of months before it was supposed to take place. Clearly, the ReedPop and ESA partnership wasn't working well, so both companies have decided to move on. ESA CEO and president Stanley Pierre-Louis provided the following statement on the matter to GamesIndustry.biz.
"We appreciate ReedPop’s partnership over the past 14 months and support their ongoing efforts to bring industry and fans together through their various events. While the reach of E3 remains unmatched in our industry, we are continuing to explore how we can evolve it to best serve the video game industry and are evaluating every aspect of the event, from format to location. We are committed to our role as a convenor for the industry and look forward to sharing news about E3 in the coming months."
This seems to confirm a claim from the Los Angeles City Tourism Commission from earlier in the year that plans for E3 2024 and E3 2025 at the Los Angeles Convention Center had been canceled. That said, Pierre-Louis' statement and the GamesIndustry.biz report indicate that E3 2024 and E3 2025 aren't canceled outright.
GamesIndustry.biz notes that it's still possible for the event to take place in 2024 -- just not at the Los Angeles Convention Center -- and claims that the ESA is "working on a complete reinvention of the E3 show for 2025." We'll just have to wait and see if those plans actually come to fruition, though, as E3 has struggled to return to its former glory since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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ESA denies E3 2024 and 2025 have been canceled, despite LA tourism board’s claims

There are conflicting reports over whether or not E3 2024 and E3 2025 will take place. A new document from the Los Angeles City Tourism Commission claims that both E3 2024 and E3 2025 have been canceled, but a spokesperson for the Entertainment Software Association claims no final decision has been made yet.

For over 20 years, the ESA held an event called E3 each June, where companies from around the video game industry would come together and show off their upcoming games. It got canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the ESA took 2022 off after a rough digital-only show in 2021. The expo was set to return in 2023, but was canceled in March after Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and other game companies pulled out of the event. E3's future was put into question after that, and now it looks like it might not be coming back for the foreseeable future.

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With E3 2023 gone, other gaming events need to step up

Despite how inevitable the complete downfall of E3 felt over the past several years, E3 2023’s official cancellation still strings as it’s a significant loss for the game industry. For gamers, press, and developers, the show served multiple purposes that digital livestreams and scattered publisher-specific events don't currently replicate. In lieu of E3’s cancelation this year, and potentially forever, it’s time for other gaming events to step up and help push the video game industry forward.
Why we lost E3
I’m lucky enough to have the experience of attending three E3 shows across 2017, 2018, and 2019 and many publisher-run events focused on specific games or tighter game lineups. In its final years, E3 felt like the perfect middle ground to the gamer-focused PAX and industry-focused GDC, where people from all walks and sides of the video game industry could come together, see what’s coming in the future, and share their love for games.

It also felt more freeing than publisher-run events, as I discovered and experienced games of all sizes that I may not have otherwise and got to meet many people from every angle of the game industry. Apparently, the Entertainment Software Association struggled to convince enough people that this style of expo was important four years after the last physical event.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Entertainment Software Association president Stanley Pierre-Louis blamed E3 2023’s cancellation on the Covid-19 pandemic, “economic headwinds” due to the current recession that impacted marketing budgets, and the fact that “companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and digital marketing opportunities.”
The first two are understandable and have impacted a lot of physical events over the past couple of years. Still, the last reason speaks to a bit more worrying of a shift for those looking to network, get attention from the press, get a broader look at the industry’s future, or even pitch a game.
What we lose
Events are a great way for indies to get unexpected and much-needed attention from players and the press; look at the chance encounter that got one of our team’s freelancers hooked on Homeseek at PAX East. Now, indies will have to hope to gain attention at those more indie-focused events like PAX or be cherry-picked to be featured in a more prominent company’s showcasing. There’s also the networking and pitch factor to it.