A look inside the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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A look inside the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt SA Chief Executive Officer Marcin Iwiński made a public mea culpa this week about the disastrous rollout of the video game Cyberpunk 2077 in December.

He took personal responsibility and asked fans not to blame the team.

In a somber five-minute video address and accompanying blog post, Iwiński acknowledged the game “did not meet the quality standard we wanted to meet. I and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this.”

[Bloomberg]
 
Hey what a nicely....ohhh wait, eeeerrmmm nice of you to copy and paste this rather good article from Bloomberg yes.:)
 
So far I've put in 80+ hours on PC and have not had a single crash or game breaking bug. Sure there are the odd visual glitches (pedestrians disappearing or clipping), but that is the case with most new releases and no a big deal for me. I do think however that CDPR should have rather spend their time polishing the PC and next gen consoles for the launch and only much later release it on the previous gen consoles. But if you have a decently specked PC, I highly recommend it!
 
livw88 said:
So far I've put in 80+ hours on PC and have not had a single crash or game breaking bug. Sure there are the odd visual glitches (pedestrians disappearing or clipping), but that is the case with most new releases and no a big deal for me. I do think however that CDPR should have rather spend their time polishing the PC and next gen consoles for the launch and only much later release it on the previous gen consoles. But if you have a decently specked PC, I highly recommend it!
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Had my first crash this weekend after 55 hours.

I can't put this game down, with all its bugs it's still very engaging to play. The side missions are really interesting and well fleshed out but another year in the oven for this game would have really been worth it imo, would have given things the extra polish it deserves.
 
livw88 said:
So far I've put in 80+ hours on PC and have not had a single crash or game breaking bug. Sure there are the odd visual glitches (pedestrians disappearing or clipping), but that is the case with most new releases and no a big deal for me. I do think however that CDPR should have rather spend their time polishing the PC and next gen consoles for the launch and only much later release it on the previous gen consoles. But if you have a decently specked PC, I highly recommend it!
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Ayy, in development for 6-years. I understand the demand for a better polished product.
 
CDPR deceives their shareholders,
CDPR deceives their consumers,

Fanbois attack concerned consumers,
Fanbois opinionated towards shareholders,

Save the CDPR devs!!!

The point is the game was released too early, and whilst the game was in preoder status it was deceptivily marketed. Neither should the previous generation console market have been targeted.

I remember when Jim Sterling said that the game needed more years, and he was damned making that statement.

It may be your GOTY, but it is pretty low standard to consider the title as SOTY when it could have been GOTY in 2022/2023.

I like how the CDPR protectors are currently highlighting since the article that everyone knew that the game was only put into development in 2016 and that this was to be expected and that every CDPR game releases in this state and that they always patch the game... Uhm... Yeah... What CDPR did was bad business practice and unethical. People consider this as normal then I don't want to know to what corporate culture they are used to.
 
livw88 said:
So far I've put in 80+ hours on PC and have not had a single crash or game breaking bug. Sure there are the odd visual glitches (pedestrians disappearing or clipping), but that is the case with most new releases and no a big deal for me. I do think however that CDPR should have rather spend their time polishing the PC and next gen consoles for the launch and only much later release it on the previous gen consoles. But if you have a decently specked PC, I highly recommend it!
Click to expand...

For me, I think CDPR probably should have put their cocks on the block and made Cyberpunk 2077 a bumper new release for the new consoles rather than trying to make it available on the older generation consoles.

It is a flagship game from what I've seen of it, and even though I have an Xbox One X, I very much doubt I'll pay for this game on that platform as I think they will have to gimp the game severely to make it run even vaguely acceptably.
 
ToxicBunny said:
For me, I think CDPR probably should have put their cocks on the block and made Cyberpunk 2077 a bumper new release for the new consoles rather than trying to make it available on the older generation consoles.

It is a flagship game from what I've seen of it, and even though I have an Xbox One X, I very much doubt I'll pay for this game on that platform as I think they will have to gimp the game severely to make it run even vaguely acceptably.
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You are 100% correct. Iwiński explains in the clip some of the challenges (compact, 'always on' open world) and it seems clear that the plan was more than just ambitious it was almost aspirational. Should have limited the compatibility plans to new consoled and well specced gaming rigs.
 
Yeah I also think it will only be ready by 2022, and the current gen consoles aren't the issue.
 
ToxicBunny said:
For me, I think CDPR probably should have put their cocks on the block and made Cyberpunk 2077 a bumper new release for the new consoles rather than trying to make it available on the older generation consoles.

It is a flagship game from what I've seen of it, and even though I have an Xbox One X, I very much doubt I'll pay for this game on that platform as I think they will have to gimp the game severely to make it run even vaguely acceptably.
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People forget Cyberpunk was announced in May 2012. The Xbox one then announced in March 2013, and the PS4 in Feb 2013. Both released later in the year. People also forget that there is a hell of a user base with those consoles. I am no CEO or director of CDPR, but I wouldn't take "we have to leave out potentially millions of users and lose a lot of dosh because the hardware is too old" too well if I were.

In an ideal world, I agree with you. They should have managed expectations better, or said outright that it won't be released on the consoles from the get go. But they didn't.

Kind of also makes you think where they should draw the line if they had to do that. Do they also ignore the millions of people with potato PC's?
 
mr_norris said:
People forget Cyberpunk was announced in May 2012. The Xbox one then announced in March 2013, and the PS4 in Feb 2013. Both released later in the year. People also forget that there is a hell of a user base with those consoles. I am no CEO or director of CDPR, but I wouldn't take "we have to leave out potentially millions of users and lose a lot of dosh because the hardware is too old" too well if I were.

In an ideal world, I agree with you. They should have managed expectations better, or said outright that it won't be released on the consoles from the get go. But they didn't.

Kind of also makes you think where they should draw the line if they had to do that. Do they also ignore the millions of people with potato PC's?
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They only started development in 2016 effectively (or they reset development). At that point you are half way into the life span of the console and you know that the Dev work is going to take 4+ years, which would put your release date squarely at the end of the console life cycle. You don't do overly ambitious totally ground up new tech at that point in a consoles life.

You target the PC Master race first and foremost with a title like that... and then when the next gen consoles are available as Dev platform you get your hands on one and start seeing what is possible/not on them and if the port is a viable thing.
 
ToxicBunny said:
They only started development in 2016 effectively (or they reset development). At that point you are half way into the life span of the console and you know that the Dev work is going to take 4+ years, which would put your release date squarely at the end of the console life cycle. You don't do overly ambitious totally ground up new tech at that point in a consoles life.

You target the PC Master race first and foremost with a title like that... and then when the next gen consoles are available as Dev platform you get your hands on one and start seeing what is possible/not on them and if the port is a viable thing.
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I agree with you, but it doesn't make it right. Imagine if you saw the announcement of Cyberpunk in 2012, then bought a new console expecting to play it the year after. And it still comes down to money - there are 110+ million PS4 / pro's out there. And who knows how many xbox ones. It's a hard number to ignore.
 
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mr_norris said:
I agree with you, but it doesn't make it right. Imagine if you saw the announcement of Cyberpunk in 2012, then bought a new console expecting to play it the year after. And it still comes down to money - there are 110+ million PS4 / pro's out there. And who knows how many xbox ones. It's a hard number to ignore.
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Yeah this was developed for the current gen consoles. The next gen ones may make it run better/prettier but it shouldn't be a requirement. Their visual material was also a complete lie with the way it initially looked.
 
mr_norris said:
I agree with you, but it doesn't make it right. Imagine if you saw the announcement of Cyberpunk in 2012, then bought a new console expecting to play it the year after. And it still comes down to money - there are 110+ million PS4 / pro's out there. And who knows how many xbox ones. It's a hard number to ignore.
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Umm, if you saw the announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2012 and bought a new console expecting to play it next year then you were an idiot.

They announced it. There was ZERO release date attached it it until at least late 2018/early 2019. At which point public hype for the next gen console was starting to build and the release games for the next gen consoles would have been under development already by then.

As for targeting current gen consoles, it was clearly never actually designed to work even remotely passably on the current gen consoles. It was shoehorned to try and run on current gen consoles and it failed miserably.
 
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