Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was a mess on consoles. With reports of hard crashes, bugs, and poor performance on the Xbox One and PS4 base units, CD Projekt Red has gone into damage mitigation on its open-world RPG.
First, the developer offered refunds via social media (the now-famous black font on a yellow background, which usually means ‘bad Cyberpunk news’) – and the developer also released a transcript of a conference call highlighting issues with the game. addressed.
Frankly, it doesn’t make the situation any better.
“After three delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on getting the game out,” said President and Co-CEO Adam Kiciński. “We underestimated the scale and complexity of the problems, ignoring the signs that more time was needed to refine the game on the base consoles of the last generation. It was the wrong approach and went against our corporate philosophy. we mainly see the game on PCs. “
CD Projekt acknowledges that the console’s launch damaged its reputation with players, which was arguably sky-high after The Witcher 3, and generated a lot of goodwill ahead of the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
“This caused the loss of gamers’ trust and the reputation we’ve built up over much of our lives. Therefore, our first steps are solely focused on reclaiming those two things. We’ll focus on solving Cyberpunk on the latest generation consoles. ”It will then announce the upcoming patches that will be rolled out before the end of the year, and the others coming in January and February.
CD Projekt Red did not show Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay on PS4 and Xbox One base consoles before release – IT did showing images on the upgraded PS4 Pro and Xbox One X machines, but it meant that the game’s performance issues were a nasty surprise to many players. Cyberpunk 2077 generated 8 million sales from pre-orders alone, with a significant portion on consoles.
It doesn’t look good.
The part of this call that is drawing the most rage on the internet right now are the following passages, after the speakers were asked more about the game’s delays, the console version was not getting enough attention, and whether the priority was not to play the game. to let it slow down again in next year.
“First – your question was about the focus and cause of ours, ignoring the shortcomings of the current generation, so to speak. It’s more about us looking – as mentioned before – at the PC and its performance. the next generation. than the current generation, “said Michał Nowakowski, SVP of business development. “We certainly haven’t spent enough time on that.”
Nowakowski went on to address the delays this time and what the situation was with the game’s certification with Sony and Microsoft – this process takes place before any game is released on those platforms.
“I wouldn’t say we felt any external or internal pressure to release on the date – other than the normal pressure, which is typical for every release. So that wasn’t the cause. In terms of the certification process and the third parties – this is absolutely on our side. I can only assume that they were confident that we would sort things out on release, and that clearly didn’t work out exactly as we planned. “
None of this really makes up a good excuse for why the game launched on base consoles in a rough state. The transcript also examines the effects of Covid-19 on the testing for the game, and why throwing hundreds of other developers to the project wouldn’t have made a difference to the end result. It also notes that players who enjoy the game on next-gen consoles, PC and Stadia will have a better experience.
Can CD Projekt put it right?
It’s a fascinating transcript to read – the developer is very remorseful of how it went. And there is a firm commitment to fix the game. “Unfortunately, I can’t share the cost of additional work, but the cost of patching the game is irrelevant compared to what we’ve already spent,” said CFO Piotr Nielubowicz. “So there’s no question – we absolutely want to fix the game; we’ve made a promise to gamers and we will do everything we can to keep it.”
Players are absolutely justified in being frustrated with the state the game was launched in, but it’s also in bad shape that the console version of CD Projekt Red was not provided to reviewers before the game’s review embargo was lifted. That means the game’s verdict has been on the PC version, which is not without its issues, but quite amazing to see when it really runs smoothly (requiring demanding hardware).
We’ll wait and see how this develops – there is a good game among the launch issues for Cyberpunk 2077. It’s just a shame you don’t necessarily get that when you buy it now on PS4 and Xbox One.