Well, after the announcement that CDPR will develop its future games with the new Unreal Engine 5 and consequently will abandon the Red Engine, I think that the future of Cyberpunk 2077 is not promising at all. Although they have stated that they will continue to update it, it is undeniable that game development going forward using the new UE5 raises suspicions that the "lifetime" of CP2077 is short and that all efforts will focus on the new The Witcher. . I know, they will deliver some more updates, content and expansion for CP2077. I would like CDPR to deliver at least two major expansions and a lot of new content. However, I believe that if we have expansion, it will only be one and that is the end of it. The rest is dream. Regrettably, if that happens (and I believe it will), it's a huge waste because there's so much to tell and explore in Night City and beyond. Furthermore, I repeat, the company has officially announced that it is developing a new game in The Witcher saga - which will use UE5. I think the most massive efforts are now focused on this new game. So despite numerous denials by their respective representatives in the media, CP2077, I strongly suspect, will be abandoned by the end of 2022. I don't know what you guys think. I repeat: I want to be wrong. Although...,
I don't think CP2077 will be abandon before it was originally intended to be, not to be understood negatively. Like with the TW3, they released it and then they created some DLCs and expansions and they were done with it more or less. And moved on to new projects like CP.
Even if they decide to move to Unreal, it doesn't mean that the Red engine is dead as a result, it is still what drives CP and for the most part the engine is not what causes the issues with CP as I see it, to the point where it is useless. Far from it, we are not talking Bethesda quality engine here
So I think they will release the expansions as they said for CP, equally to what they did with TW3, at least that was what they originally said they would. And when those are done, I think they might either, drop the engine and "permanently" move to Unreal or they might develop it in the background for future use.
The reason for this, I think is more of a strategic decision than anything else. The Unreal engine is very good and you have a huge experienced dedicated team constantly working and improving it. Which will save CDPR a lot of development time having to create their own engine and therefore be able to focus on creating their games instead, because creating a game engine is not a cheap task.
So even if they have to pay royalties to Unreal, it might not really cost them a lot more than having to create their own engine and maintain it.
Another benefit might be that more people are experienced in working with Unreal compared to having to train them in the Red engine, which also cost time and money.
We have seen how many issues these things can cause with the Frostbite engine for example and Mass Effect Andromeda and if im not mistaken Anthem ran into similar issues also having to be developed on that engine.
Finally, looking at Unreal and what it can do, we have the Matrix demo etc. and it seems to be able to handle the type of games that CDPR wants to make very well. Obviously time will tell whether it will work or not, but without really knowing it, it does seem to be a good choice in my opinion.
But I wouldn't be worried about CP being dropped prematurely, due to that. I assume most of CDPR employees are well educated and experienced in working with the Red engine to complete those expansions for CP.
The next CP game might very well be created in Unreal, if it turns out to have improved the development of the TW game.
