Future Uncertain For Witcher Console Ports [UPDATE] News

Polish developer CJ Projekt has reportedly cancelled the console ports of last year's The Witcher after the financial crisis forced the studio to lay off a significant portion of its staff and close down two game projects.

This news comes from an initial report by Polish site Polygamia, which has since been backed up by a Game Banshee article that cites an "inside industry contact" and both reports allege that The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf is no more.

According to the reports, three projects were underway at CJ Projekt, one of them being The Witcher 2, the second of which was the original game's console ports, and the third project was reportedly a new game based on The Witcher IP.

It seems the studio has since had to cancel two of these projects and lay off staff after it ran into difficulties arising from the global financial crisis. While The Witcher 2 project remains underway at the studio, development on the other two projects has seemingly been halted.

Official details are flaky on these reports at the moment, although CD Projekt's PR and Community Manager has stated on the game's forums that, "We will comment on this in official release soon."

Sounds ominous.

Update: Olivier Masclef, the head of WideScreen (the studio developing The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf for CD Projekt), has spoken out about the console ports' development struggles since this article first went to press.

"After having a payment being broken by CD Projekt - a big payment that we were supposed to receive - and after having committed to the project but not being covered financially on it for three months, I hold no choice but to put the team on hold," Masclef told VG247.

Given Masclef's candour, we're going to consider Rise of the White Wolf cancelled until Atari or CD Projekt tells us otherwise.