Another big game is getting pushed back. Developer CD Projekt RED has announced that their third installment in the Witcher franchise, titled The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, will no longer be released in the fall of 2014.

Instead the game will now be released in February of 2015, meaning fans of the series that have been anxiously awaiting its release now have around one year still to go. This is not bad news, however. While waiting for a game you’re excited about is tough, taking as much time as necessary to ensure the best possible final product usually pays off when it’s all said and done.

Continue reading to read CD Projekt RED’s announcement and reasons for the decision.

Release Date of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – An Open Letter

Ever since we started working on the third installment in The Witcher franchise, it has been our aim to produce a title that would take our 11 years of experience in creating RPGS and distill them into a quintessence, into a game that would effectively crown those years. At the same time, we have wanted The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to expand creative boundaries, set new benchmarks, develop the genre as a whole. Ultimately, you, the players, must get an unforgettable adventure to experience in a vast, open world – and that’s most important. We’ve created a story that flows naturally, cinematically, rendered it in amazing sound and visuals, while preserving full freedom of choice – all for you. We knew this to be an ambitious plan, but believed we could achieve it by bringing together our team with its creative energies and current gaming platforms with their technical capabilities. A project this vast and complex would inevitably require special care in its final stages, manual fine-tuning of many details, thorough testing time and again.

We recently reexamined what we had achieved thus far, and faced a choice about the game’s final release date. The decision we made was difficult, thoroughly considered, and ultimately clear and obvious. We could have released the game towards the end of this year as we had initially planned. Yet we concluded that a few additional months will let us achieve the quality that will satisfy us, the quality gamers expect from us. Consequently, we have set the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for February 2015.

Dear gamers – we know many of you would have liked to play The Witcher 3 sooner, as soon as possible, even. We’re sorry to make you wait longer than you, or we, initially assumed you would. At the same time, we believe the game will prove to be worth the wait and meet the expectations you have of us. We believe The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be an exceptional RPG, one of the best, providing many hours of wonderful entertainment.

Dear shareholders – we are aware of the responsibility that rests with us and thank you for the trust you have granted us thus far. We firmly believe that quality – more than any other factor – determines a game’s success, and that the decision we have made is thus equally valid in business terms.

The Board of CD PROJEKT S.A.

Adam Kiciński, Martcin Iwiński, Piotr Nielubowicz, Adam Badowski, Michael Nowakowski

Moving the game back a few months shouldn’t damage excitement for the game too much. We’ve already seen some gameplay, and the game is said to be 30 times bigger than The Witcher 2 and bigger than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, so it’s easy to understand the need for more time to get it right, and even easier to be eager to finally get our hands on it when it does hit store shelves.

[Source: Kotaku]