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Comment by platz | Hacker News Reader

So, what sales-related project management questions for the CD Projekt Management Board does this answer for the HN crowd?

Are people upset that this AAA game that is trying do everything on all devices for a huge audience doesn't perform well on the last-gen consoles on it's initial rollout?

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Last-gen consoles? If it wasn't for the most recent delay of release date, Cyberpunk 2077 would've been released before PS5 and the new Xbox were even available for purchase. You're acting like people are trying to play this game on an NES.

If the game ain't gonna work on a certain console, don't sell it for that console. Plain and simple. Or if you're going to release it anyway, at least let gaming critics review it and let the public make an informed decision, which CDPR deliberately didn't do.

I'm baffled as to why so many people are defending this incredibly shady business practice by CDPR.

I'm using their own terminology.

The complaints aren't about CP77 performance on Xbox Series X or PS5. They're about it's performance on non-X Xbox One and non-Pro PS4s. Which aren't just last-gen consoles, they're the lowest tier of last gen consoles. I don't think CDPR should have released the games on those platforms if they don't have their performance scaling right. I'm not defending their actions, but I think most people just have their expectations out of whack.

CP77 is the first AAA game released in a long time that was built for PC first and ported to consoles, instead of the other way around. Instead of PCs getting crappy ports hard-limited to 60fps no matter how much GPU you throw at it, and crappy control schemes, the dregs of last-gen consoles got really poor performance and visuals compared to people on PS4 Pros, Xbox One X, and the latest 2020 gen consoles. It's not acceptable, but it's also hard to imagine how you could have made people happy when they're that far underpowered from a hardware department for a game like CP77.

Thats funny because I felt like it was a port because of the horrible control scheme. You cant move slower, so you have to tap keys to move slowly, but tapping keys does dashes, exactly the opposite what you would want. Dig around some conf files to fix it. Crouch button is c, but it doesnt work during dialogue, even if you rebind the dialogue skip button that is also c by default.

Its like nobody playtested it at all on PC

I feel like your PC port complaints are about 5 to 10 years out of date. I can't think of a AAA game I've played on PC in the last 5 years that was locked to 60fps and had crappy controls—All the big AAA ports like Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed have all been fine recently.

And yeah, the PS4 and Xbox One are long in the tooth, but there are plenty of games that look absolutely stellar on them. I'm going to only give some PS4 examples here, since that is the one I have, but Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, and The Last of Us Part 2 all came out recently and look _really_ good even on a 7 year old console. And 3 of those are open world.

It's definitely possible to make a base PS4/Xbox one game that looks really good, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for CDPR to have taken those consoles into account from the beginning. If so, they might have had a chance of them being fine on day one. I just hope people on a PS4/Xbox One that bought the game will eventually get a patch that make it run reasonably, since apparently refunds aren't really happening.

This is also on the console makers. They brought PC fragmentation to the consoles by making different versions of the same console over the decade.

To make it worse, they will not let a publisher publish just to PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Your game has to work on all versions of the console.

It's beyond idiotic and I'm surprised it took so long for the consequences to be visible.

I'm glad Sony at least seems to have backed away from fragmenting their own platform in this generation.

CDPR should have done their due diligence, obviously, but the platform owners have done them no favors by adding another dimension to the testing matrix.

The developers essentially transformed the game from a current gen to a next gen title between 2018 and 2020.

Compare the 2018 version to the release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogihi-OewPQ

They probably should've just come out and said they're not releasing the game for the last gen after all, and people would have been somewhat more understanding.

Oh, come on. This level of transparency is really fascinating. What other gaming companies, or tech companies for that matter, do you remember going into the details of a bad launch this soon after it happened. Or really even much later.

It doesn't seem like they address the main issues, like AI. I doubt you can treat the absence of major attributes of an open-world game, like car chases, as a bug. They're cleverly focusing on minor glitches and bugs in their talk.

They explicitly addressed the AI point:

So, for the first question – whether we’re focusing just on technicalities or gameplay elements; things like AI – for example. To be honest – these are the same for us, from the production standpoint AI and NPC behavior fall within the general category of bugs, so if I can give you an answer – I think it does actually include that as well.

But there's a big difference between bugs in AI and no driving or pursuit AI at all. That's why people aren't satisfied with their statement, they're trying to blur the line between bug and non-existent feature.

Square Enix with FFXIV 1.0

They took full responsibility. Suspended the subscripton for months. People who subbed for at least 3 months before the shutdown got permanent discounted subscription in the new version. They changed the whole upper management of the division responsible of the game. And much more.

Honestly there are 2 games that had a remarkable turn around from a total disaster launch: FFXIV 1.0 and No Man's Sky. Not sure Cyberpunk can do it too.

Various AAA titles released over the last 4 years look better, perform better, and have better AI

Alternatively they could have reskinned the Witcher and people would have been content

This game will be good in 2021 when released again on the new generation of consoles

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