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Wasn't it obvious to anyone who play-tested on last-gen consoles that the game is nearly unplayable and so will receive horrendous reviews? Presumably CDPR empl

by _cs2017_ 6y ago

Wasn't it obvious to anyone who play-tested on last-gen consoles that the game is nearly unplayable and so will receive horrendous reviews? Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? After reading this transcript, I didn't find the answer to these questions. "Underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues": it's not like they needed to estimate anything. This is not an MMO that behaves differently after the million users log in. This is not a PC that behaves differently on unpredictable end-user's systems. This is not a game where problems only occur under some rare combinations of factors. "We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game": signals implies some indirect evidence that can be interpreted differently. It seems, however, that the management would have a pretty unambiguous information at their disposal.

pavon 6y ago
They overestimated how much they could fix in the time between the initial delivery and the day-one patch.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  Yeah it reads to me more like they were pressured to release it quickly before the holidays by investors, and the decision makers didn't listen to those below saying that it just couldn't be done (to the quality everyone expected). I've been playing it on both PS4 Pro and PC and haven't experienced any game-breaking issues, and I was as hyped about this game as anyone (huge fan of the original RPG and CDPR in general), but I still would've preferred they just came out and said "We fucked up, we need more time" and delayed it until next year. People would've been pissed, media would've eaten them alive, but ultimately when the game came out it would've been 10x bigger than it is even now, and the game truly has potential to be one of the greats... after about another year of work.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    ...or it could have become Duke Nukem Forever, the game which was always just one year away, and was ultimately disappointing. DNF was a product of the culture of the 90s, and just didn't work when it was eventually released. There's a real risk that if Cyberpunk was delayed further, whatever cultural winds drive its sails (and sales) could shift and the game would stall.
    - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
      Yeah, Duke Nukem 3D was shocking for its time. Duke Nukem Forever just feels like your creepy uncle telling the same sexist jokes from almost 25 years ago. The shtick didn't age well.
  - User23 6y ago
    Or just marketed it as early access.
pojzon 6y ago
CDPR is owned in 66% by investors. And investors want ROI and there is nothing better than holiday season for that. They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released it either way because “money>everything”. Its really that simple.
- _cs2017_ 6y ago
  I'd think this was worse for the investors than not releasing in December and delaying until ~March? Stock price down over 30%.
  - wmichelin 6y ago
    I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.
    - john_minsk 6y ago
      A sign that Investors in this company are not looking to build long term fundamental business. They are there only to rip off immediate profit. Too bad.
      - cwhiz 6y ago
        Christmas, new console releases, new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, and a pandemic. Take the pandemic out of the equation and it is still extraordinarily rare to have all of those events at the same time. Weigh the costs of having a bad release against the costs of missing these extraordinary circumstances. It’s not hard to see why they made the decision they did.
        pault 6y ago
        And just so 2020 can give you a kick in the teeth on the way out the door, you can't buy any of these technological wonders unless you pay a scalper on eBay a 100% premium.
aspaceman 6y ago
Besides other reasons I think management thought they could get away with it. Reviewers were given the PC version, so I imagine it was a calculation of “how many reviewers are willing to wait on traffic, just to review old consoles?” It just didn’t work out for them.
dogma1138 6y ago
Yeah I don't get it, TW3 was unplayable for quite a while on base consoles, sub 30 fps throughout most of the game, and CB2077 is a game with much bigger scope the base consoles couldn't handle the NPC rich areas in TW3 so no matter how much optimization they would do I don't understand who thought that this game will ever be playable on the base previous gen consoles.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  People who saw a game sold for their platform assumed it was fit for purpose. I don't understand who tries to complicate that with sentiments like "they should have known better"
- allarm 6y ago
  This point is incorrect. If they’re releasing the game for current gen, it should be playable on it.
  - freeflight 6y ago
    Current gen is the PS5 and Xbox Series, except for occasional crashes the game looks and performs really well on those.
    - temp 6y ago
      The game's been announced 7 years ago and multiple original release dates were prior to the PS5 and Xbox Series even coming out. If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all.
      - dkersten 6y ago
        > If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all. Exactly. If they release and advertise it for a platform, it better work. If it doesn't, don't release on that platform.
    - 6y ago
pier25 6y ago
> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? The game should have been delayed until Xmas 2021 but CDPR probably had contracts they couldn't break with Sony, Xbox, or maybe even Nvidia.
- Arelius 6y ago
  There may have been contract issues, but more likely the cost of an additional year of development vs getting holiday profit made a lot of the decision.
  - pier25 6y ago
    They could have released the PC version and wait a year or two to release to consoles. It's similar to what Rockstar did with RDR2.
calibas 6y ago
It's because of Christmas, that's pretty much the whole reasoning for why they released when they did.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  Well, yes and no. The more you delay, the more it costs and you have to restart the marketing machine to drum up the hype.
  - calibas 6y ago
    Of course it's marketing, but that's what Christmas is all about, right?
ineedasername 6y ago
Management may very well have had little or no choice in the matter. The game had already been pushed multiple times and there was half a $Billion in pre-orders alone waiting to be collected. Estimates put the dev budget a little over $300 million [0]. After retailers & Steam take their cut and given that a lot of sales were full-cut direct through GOG, that puts the game around break-even status before it even hits normal retail sales. Given this picture, it is highly likely that investors forced through this decision to go forward as much or more than management did. Push the game again and you'll really start losing pre-orders, and the next time a release date comes around people will be even more hesitant to drop $60 before release. (As a side note, I'm playing the game on low-end gaming hardware and it works fine. Occasional graphical glitches, 1 crash. It's hard to live up to the hype, but it's still a great game. Feels like a mashup of GTA V with heavy RPG elements set in a future dystopia. Small hints of Assassin's Creed stealth, maybe more if you build your character in that direction.) [0] https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-become-the-most-expensive-game-of-all-time-arjaa2a9dfqp https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-beco...
zemo 6y ago
> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers, so if anything I would assume the opposite is true: that it's an environment where the QA staff is chronically underpaid, lives in perpetual fear of dismissal, and is told that working on the biggest game ever is the honor of a lifetime.
- freeflight 6y ago
  > it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers How so? They changed the revenue based bonuses to be paid out regardless of review averages [0]. They at least tried to make a commitment to less crunch, while over at Rockstar the amount of crunch for RDR2 was something the co-founder publicly bragged about [1]. Now people on forums are citing RDR2 as an example for "How to make a great open world game!", while at the same time lynching CDPR for not living up to their attempt to minimize crunch, after several delays. The double standards at play here are mind-boggling. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-paid-bonuses-regardless-of-review-average-according-to-leaked-email/ https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-pa... [1] https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games-red-dead-redemption-2.html https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games...
  - neuronic 6y ago
    But crunch has little to do with the state of the game right now. It's a fundamentally broken game, still fun, lots of positive points as well and with a great main quest line. You can see the effort and love (on PC). But several critical components of the system seem like placeholders. Especially AI in all its forms is really bad (combat, driving, NPCs).
  - zemo 6y ago
    lot of problems with this comment. First of all, it's not a double standard: Rockstar faced similar criticism because of the crunch culture surrounding the development of RDR2. The specific article you mentioned wound up being terrible PR for Rockstar; as a direct consequence of that article, their behavior was widely criticized: https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-review-crunch-rockstar.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-re... https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466 https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1... etc. Search "Red Dead Redemption crunch" or "Rockstar Games crunch" and you'll find loads of similar articles. and the other problem is the usage of the term "lynching". Lynching refers to a vigilante execution by citizenry having no legal authority. It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin. By contrast, CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly. To equate the two is absurd.
blihp 6y ago
Don't think for a second that employees 'are not afraid to convey such bad news'. Between the massive years-long hype, delays and bad press about crunch time around the title, not to mention being the most lucrative time of year for a game release, it's very likely that management egos were fully engaged in this release. When that happens reality is no longer driving, or even on, the bus. There may have been one or two brave souls who spoke up and when no good came as a result of speaking up (at best they were disregarded, at worst it was a career limiting move), everyone else tends to fall in line. So when management holds their various last minute go/no go meetings, people tend to nod their heads in agreement recognizing the futility of trying to point out the obvious.
- cghendrix 6y ago
  Oh man.. I have personally been a victim to the results of management ego aka my first and only death march project.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ajkjk 6y ago
  I heard an interesting take: that CDPR knew that this would happen, but had to choose between "missing the holidays" and "launching even though it's broken" and decided the latter was just less of a problem.
  - danmur 6y ago
    Pretty plausible. It would be hard to put off that cash infusion.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    Maybe. It's also quite possible that they felt so much pressure that they believed what they needed to believe rather than the reality. IMO they should have just delayed the last-gen consoles. Would have sucked, but that would have avoided most of the backlash for another delay as well as that for the buggy console release.
Arelius 6y ago
Don't underestimate the ability for people to dilute the impact of bad-news as it moves up the chain. I'm sure people play-tested it and tried to raise alarms, but bad news regularly get's softened, maybe to accept less blame/responsibility?
- rvba 6y ago
  If you are in management of a company that literally publishes one game, it would make some sense to actually play this game. Probably they knew what is up: investors told them to publish, so they published.
nvrspyx 6y ago
I saw someone post a synopsis on Reddit (forgot the sub) of the actual recorded phone call and these were the points mentioned: - QA was limited and done in-house, thus remotely by people working on the game - Overestimated their ability to fix the problems before launch - Reviewers didn't have access to last-gen console versions because they were still working on the last-gen versions through the certification process up until launch day Of course, I don't put much weight on any of these. However, I'm sure there was a fair bit of pressure from investors to release during the holidays considering some of the questions asked during the call, like how "sticky" the game was despite the problems and whether they would still receive their full cut regardless of the refunds.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Question remains, why did Microsoft and Sony certify them?
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    You have to ask? Its holiday season in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide being on lockdown, or some form of lockdown, with absolutely jack shit to do other than work from home (if you even can), learn something (most people will not do this), or play video games. New movies and television have been woefully shitty. Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well. Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.
Technically 6y ago
I've played a lot of games. What do you mean by "nearly unplayable"? I'm certain you don't actually mean that based on what I've seen of the game. Of all the obvious criticisms of the game, it's that they couldn't build out the world to meet the narrative hyped by trailers. Frankly, I have no clue what the generation of consoles have to do with the problem—the game looks great, at least for a release so early in the generation. Fuck the studio for their labor practices but the product ain't the problem.
dandare 6y ago
Good catch, the root of the word Underestimate is estimation and it shall not be confused with Underrate.
blub 6y ago
I'm playing on a PS4 slim and the game is fine, I really don't understand all the negativity (v 1.0.4). I had 2-3 crashes and saw some bugs like objects hanging in the air or the weapon not being visible. Performance is fine. Bought the game a couple of days after launch and after reading the reports about horrible performance while downloading, I disabled everything under graphics, but then after a crash it reset its settings (yeah, I know) and it seems to work fine even with all settings on.
- climb_stealth 6y ago
  I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.
  - dclowd9901 6y ago
    I’m kind of dumbstruck you brought up the switch. I have never — and I am not exaggerating — never had a game freeze on me on a Nintendo system, save for a busted ass cart on a 30 year old NES. Especially lately, I feel as though Nintendo is the only brand who actually cares to provide that “just works” console experience.
    - climb_stealth 6y ago
      I had the same feeling the first time it happened. Though I think it still holds true for Nintendo games. They are rock solid. The games I have had crashes with have all been ports from other consoles.
  - killtimeatwork 6y ago
    > I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Yeah. What about the testing that is a part of mandatory game certification process? Do console vendors look the other way for key games?
djeiasbsbo 6y ago
My assumption is that all of this doesn't matter when the share holders and investors pressure the company... it's not an easy to decision whether to delay the product again, especially when there is already a negative public reaction to the multiple delays.
blunte 6y ago
It has been years since I worked for an AAA game company, but at least at that time (and probably still) the pressure from publishers to release in time for Christmas season is beyond intense. The revenue difference between selling at Christmas (even if reviews are awful) vs selling around Easter, the next available "good" retail holiday, is huge. And since these days, patches are the standard - as in, release with known deficiencies and patch your way to "OK" - it is very likely that from an overall financial perspective, releasing now was the right answer. If a game studio wants to maintain a very high level of quality, they have to be willing to lose a publisher by rejecting this. Unless that studio is already so well established that they are in demand, they just cannot afford to fight their publisher.
vkou 6y ago
> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? Because there isn't a single other major December release.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. I do not think this is a safe assumption to make. You're assuming each person passes this higher and higher up in the chain for a decision to be made.
TheRealSteel 6y ago
I'm shocked nobody else has pointed out the responsibility of Microsoft and Sony here - the whole job of a console maker is to keep crap like this off their box so you never have to stress about whether it runs properly or not. It's supposed to be the whole advantage over having a PC. It was their job to refuse certification and say "Nope, come back when the game runs properly" and they failed. That's part of what they get their money for when we pay more for console games than PC.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

pavon 6y ago

They overestimated how much they could fix in the time between the initial delivery and the day-one patch.

ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
Yeah it reads to me more like they were pressured to release it quickly before the holidays by investors, and the decision makers didn't listen to those below saying that it just couldn't be done (to the quality everyone expected). I've been playing it on both PS4 Pro and PC and haven't experienced any game-breaking issues, and I was as hyped about this game as anyone (huge fan of the original RPG and CDPR in general), but I still would've preferred they just came out and said "We fucked up, we need more time" and delayed it until next year. People would've been pissed, media would've eaten them alive, but ultimately when the game came out it would've been 10x bigger than it is even now, and the game truly has potential to be one of the greats... after about another year of work.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  ...or it could have become Duke Nukem Forever, the game which was always just one year away, and was ultimately disappointing. DNF was a product of the culture of the 90s, and just didn't work when it was eventually released. There's a real risk that if Cyberpunk was delayed further, whatever cultural winds drive its sails (and sales) could shift and the game would stall.
  - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
    Yeah, Duke Nukem 3D was shocking for its time. Duke Nukem Forever just feels like your creepy uncle telling the same sexist jokes from almost 25 years ago. The shtick didn't age well.
- User23 6y ago
  Or just marketed it as early access.

pojzon 6y ago

CDPR is owned in 66% by investors. And investors want ROI and there is nothing better than holiday season for that. They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released it either way because “money>everything”. Its really that simple.

_cs2017_ 6y ago
I'd think this was worse for the investors than not releasing in December and delaying until ~March? Stock price down over 30%.
- wmichelin 6y ago
  I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.
  - john_minsk 6y ago
    A sign that Investors in this company are not looking to build long term fundamental business. They are there only to rip off immediate profit. Too bad.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      Christmas, new console releases, new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, and a pandemic. Take the pandemic out of the equation and it is still extraordinarily rare to have all of those events at the same time. Weigh the costs of having a bad release against the costs of missing these extraordinary circumstances. It’s not hard to see why they made the decision they did.
      - pault 6y ago
        And just so 2020 can give you a kick in the teeth on the way out the door, you can't buy any of these technological wonders unless you pay a scalper on eBay a 100% premium.

aspaceman 6y ago

Besides other reasons I think management thought they could get away with it. Reviewers were given the PC version, so I imagine it was a calculation of “how many reviewers are willing to wait on traffic, just to review old consoles?” It just didn’t work out for them.

dogma1138 6y ago

Yeah I don't get it, TW3 was unplayable for quite a while on base consoles, sub 30 fps throughout most of the game, and CB2077 is a game with much bigger scope the base consoles couldn't handle the NPC rich areas in TW3 so no matter how much optimization they would do I don't understand who thought that this game will ever be playable on the base previous gen consoles.

BoorishBears 6y ago
People who saw a game sold for their platform assumed it was fit for purpose. I don't understand who tries to complicate that with sentiments like "they should have known better"
allarm 6y ago
This point is incorrect. If they’re releasing the game for current gen, it should be playable on it.
- freeflight 6y ago
  Current gen is the PS5 and Xbox Series, except for occasional crashes the game looks and performs really well on those.
  - temp 6y ago
    The game's been announced 7 years ago and multiple original release dates were prior to the PS5 and Xbox Series even coming out. If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      > If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all. Exactly. If they release and advertise it for a platform, it better work. If it doesn't, don't release on that platform.
  - 6y ago

pier25 6y ago

> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? The game should have been delayed until Xmas 2021 but CDPR probably had contracts they couldn't break with Sony, Xbox, or maybe even Nvidia.

Arelius 6y ago
There may have been contract issues, but more likely the cost of an additional year of development vs getting holiday profit made a lot of the decision.
- pier25 6y ago
  They could have released the PC version and wait a year or two to release to consoles. It's similar to what Rockstar did with RDR2.

calibas 6y ago

It's because of Christmas, that's pretty much the whole reasoning for why they released when they did.

Ygg2 6y ago
Well, yes and no. The more you delay, the more it costs and you have to restart the marketing machine to drum up the hype.
- calibas 6y ago
  Of course it's marketing, but that's what Christmas is all about, right?

ineedasername 6y ago

Management may very well have had little or no choice in the matter. The game had already been pushed multiple times and there was half a $Billion in pre-orders alone waiting to be collected. Estimates put the dev budget a little over $300 million [0]. After retailers & Steam take their cut and given that a lot of sales were full-cut direct through GOG, that puts the game around break-even status before it even hits normal retail sales. Given this picture, it is highly likely that investors forced through this decision to go forward as much or more than management did. Push the game again and you'll really start losing pre-orders, and the next time a release date comes around people will be even more hesitant to drop $60 before release. (As a side note, I'm playing the game on low-end gaming hardware and it works fine. Occasional graphical glitches, 1 crash. It's hard to live up to the hype, but it's still a great game. Feels like a mashup of GTA V with heavy RPG elements set in a future dystopia. Small hints of Assassin's Creed stealth, maybe more if you build your character in that direction.) [0] https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-become-the-most-expensive-game-of-all-time-arjaa2a9dfqp https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-beco...

zemo 6y ago

> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers, so if anything I would assume the opposite is true: that it's an environment where the QA staff is chronically underpaid, lives in perpetual fear of dismissal, and is told that working on the biggest game ever is the honor of a lifetime.

freeflight 6y ago
> it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers How so? They changed the revenue based bonuses to be paid out regardless of review averages [0]. They at least tried to make a commitment to less crunch, while over at Rockstar the amount of crunch for RDR2 was something the co-founder publicly bragged about [1]. Now people on forums are citing RDR2 as an example for "How to make a great open world game!", while at the same time lynching CDPR for not living up to their attempt to minimize crunch, after several delays. The double standards at play here are mind-boggling. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-paid-bonuses-regardless-of-review-average-according-to-leaked-email/ https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-pa... [1] https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games-red-dead-redemption-2.html https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games...
- neuronic 6y ago
  But crunch has little to do with the state of the game right now. It's a fundamentally broken game, still fun, lots of positive points as well and with a great main quest line. You can see the effort and love (on PC). But several critical components of the system seem like placeholders. Especially AI in all its forms is really bad (combat, driving, NPCs).
- zemo 6y ago
  lot of problems with this comment. First of all, it's not a double standard: Rockstar faced similar criticism because of the crunch culture surrounding the development of RDR2. The specific article you mentioned wound up being terrible PR for Rockstar; as a direct consequence of that article, their behavior was widely criticized: https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-review-crunch-rockstar.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-re... https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466 https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1... etc. Search "Red Dead Redemption crunch" or "Rockstar Games crunch" and you'll find loads of similar articles. and the other problem is the usage of the term "lynching". Lynching refers to a vigilante execution by citizenry having no legal authority. It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin. By contrast, CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly. To equate the two is absurd.

blihp 6y ago

Don't think for a second that employees 'are not afraid to convey such bad news'. Between the massive years-long hype, delays and bad press about crunch time around the title, not to mention being the most lucrative time of year for a game release, it's very likely that management egos were fully engaged in this release. When that happens reality is no longer driving, or even on, the bus. There may have been one or two brave souls who spoke up and when no good came as a result of speaking up (at best they were disregarded, at worst it was a career limiting move), everyone else tends to fall in line. So when management holds their various last minute go/no go meetings, people tend to nod their heads in agreement recognizing the futility of trying to point out the obvious.

cghendrix 6y ago
Oh man.. I have personally been a victim to the results of management ego aka my first and only death march project.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ajkjk 6y ago
I heard an interesting take: that CDPR knew that this would happen, but had to choose between "missing the holidays" and "launching even though it's broken" and decided the latter was just less of a problem.
- danmur 6y ago
  Pretty plausible. It would be hard to put off that cash infusion.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  Maybe. It's also quite possible that they felt so much pressure that they believed what they needed to believe rather than the reality. IMO they should have just delayed the last-gen consoles. Would have sucked, but that would have avoided most of the backlash for another delay as well as that for the buggy console release.

Arelius 6y ago

Don't underestimate the ability for people to dilute the impact of bad-news as it moves up the chain. I'm sure people play-tested it and tried to raise alarms, but bad news regularly get's softened, maybe to accept less blame/responsibility?

rvba 6y ago
If you are in management of a company that literally publishes one game, it would make some sense to actually play this game. Probably they knew what is up: investors told them to publish, so they published.

nvrspyx 6y ago

I saw someone post a synopsis on Reddit (forgot the sub) of the actual recorded phone call and these were the points mentioned: - QA was limited and done in-house, thus remotely by people working on the game - Overestimated their ability to fix the problems before launch - Reviewers didn't have access to last-gen console versions because they were still working on the last-gen versions through the certification process up until launch day Of course, I don't put much weight on any of these. However, I'm sure there was a fair bit of pressure from investors to release during the holidays considering some of the questions asked during the call, like how "sticky" the game was despite the problems and whether they would still receive their full cut regardless of the refunds.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Question remains, why did Microsoft and Sony certify them?
- cbozeman 6y ago
  You have to ask? Its holiday season in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide being on lockdown, or some form of lockdown, with absolutely jack shit to do other than work from home (if you even can), learn something (most people will not do this), or play video games. New movies and television have been woefully shitty. Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well. Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.

Technically 6y ago

I've played a lot of games. What do you mean by "nearly unplayable"? I'm certain you don't actually mean that based on what I've seen of the game. Of all the obvious criticisms of the game, it's that they couldn't build out the world to meet the narrative hyped by trailers. Frankly, I have no clue what the generation of consoles have to do with the problem—the game looks great, at least for a release so early in the generation. Fuck the studio for their labor practices but the product ain't the problem.

dandare 6y ago

Good catch, the root of the word Underestimate is estimation and it shall not be confused with Underrate.

blub 6y ago

I'm playing on a PS4 slim and the game is fine, I really don't understand all the negativity (v 1.0.4). I had 2-3 crashes and saw some bugs like objects hanging in the air or the weapon not being visible. Performance is fine. Bought the game a couple of days after launch and after reading the reports about horrible performance while downloading, I disabled everything under graphics, but then after a crash it reset its settings (yeah, I know) and it seems to work fine even with all settings on.

climb_stealth 6y ago
I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.
- dclowd9901 6y ago
  I’m kind of dumbstruck you brought up the switch. I have never — and I am not exaggerating — never had a game freeze on me on a Nintendo system, save for a busted ass cart on a 30 year old NES. Especially lately, I feel as though Nintendo is the only brand who actually cares to provide that “just works” console experience.
  - climb_stealth 6y ago
    I had the same feeling the first time it happened. Though I think it still holds true for Nintendo games. They are rock solid. The games I have had crashes with have all been ports from other consoles.
- killtimeatwork 6y ago
  > I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Yeah. What about the testing that is a part of mandatory game certification process? Do console vendors look the other way for key games?

djeiasbsbo 6y ago

My assumption is that all of this doesn't matter when the share holders and investors pressure the company... it's not an easy to decision whether to delay the product again, especially when there is already a negative public reaction to the multiple delays.

blunte 6y ago

It has been years since I worked for an AAA game company, but at least at that time (and probably still) the pressure from publishers to release in time for Christmas season is beyond intense. The revenue difference between selling at Christmas (even if reviews are awful) vs selling around Easter, the next available "good" retail holiday, is huge. And since these days, patches are the standard - as in, release with known deficiencies and patch your way to "OK" - it is very likely that from an overall financial perspective, releasing now was the right answer. If a game studio wants to maintain a very high level of quality, they have to be willing to lose a publisher by rejecting this. Unless that studio is already so well established that they are in demand, they just cannot afford to fight their publisher.

vkou 6y ago

> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? Because there isn't a single other major December release.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. I do not think this is a safe assumption to make. You're assuming each person passes this higher and higher up in the chain for a decision to be made.

TheRealSteel 6y ago

I'm shocked nobody else has pointed out the responsibility of Microsoft and Sony here - the whole job of a console maker is to keep crap like this off their box so you never have to stress about whether it runs properly or not. It's supposed to be the whole advantage over having a PC. It was their job to refuse certification and say "Nope, come back when the game runs properly" and they failed. That's part of what they get their money for when we pay more for console games than PC.

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