Another day, another release date shift from CD Projekt Red and their highly anticipated sci-fi title Cyberpunk 2077. This latest delay bumps the game from a November 19th release to a December 10th date, buying the team 21 extra days to fully prep their sure-to-be-massive launch and the Day 0 patch that will bring added improvements to their game, which has already "gone gold."

The bad news is obvious: Fans who were excited to check out the title in less than a month will now have to wait just a little bit longer. Maybe some streaming schedules will have been shifted a bit. But that's really the extent of it. The good news is that gamers will have a little breathing room between the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and games like Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, and ... yeah, honestly just check out this video game release date calendar for the truckload of new games and next-gen upgrades coming to physical and virtual store shelves everywhere this November. It's also good news for the Devs and programmers who are doing their best to avoid the "crunch."

Check out the latest news from CD Projekt Red:

This release date news comes on the heels of reports that CD Projekt Red is "cutting" certain features from the game that were featured in earlier promotional content. First of all, the shaping of games and the content they end up with at launch is always going to be part of the production process along the way, and that content may be lost due to programming / mechanics difficulties, creative decisions, or just lack of resources. What's different here is that CD Projekt Red is more transparent than most when it comes to their behind-the-scenes production, so that transparency has led to more expectation and, ironically, more disappointment when certain aspects aren't included.

Cyberpunk 2077's Senior Level Designer Miles Tost's statement, originally made on the Cyberpunk Discord, addressed these very issues:

[C]utting features and scope is a very normal part of development. You can witness it so openly with our game, because we happily gave in to community wishes and showed you that 2018 demo. Think about it. The game - 2 years from release. Of course we iterate and change stuff and of course we also will have ideas that sound great on paper but then doesn't end up working out well in the game with all the other features.

...

In the end, it is all about how much fun the game and it systems provide you and we are doing our best to make sure it is as great of an experience as it can be. Sometimes for that, you have to make some hard decisions and this time around, you were here to witness it.

Tost ends that practical chat with a more hopeful note:

I can only keep saying what I have been saying in the past: you guys have seen nothing yet. It's less than a month now, soon all your questions will be answered (hopefully satisfyingly!) and I can't wait for you all to play it finally. Been a long time coming

We'll find out how the newly shaped Cyberpunk 2077 plays on December 10, 2020 (we hope).