Was last gen a mistake?

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ya1

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Mistake? Biggest digital release of all times, people. Expect the next game star Reynolds, Wahlberg and Farrell. And literally every stat be fake, not just every second one.
 
Mistake? Biggest digital release of all times, people. Expect the next game star Reynolds, Wahlberg and Farrell. And literally every stat be fake, not just every second one.

but digital is likely mostly on pc and the improved consoles, since Sony took it out of digital stores within like 1-2 weeks. They would have probably not lost that much sales by delaying base console release.

but hey I could be wrong, there is a possibility that the console backlash is highly overrated.
 
No. Releasing the game when Covid happened was. The game should have been delayed till further notice. Back when the April delay was done.
 
Perhaps, but Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't have been the same game only more polished had it been released solely as a PC and next gen title.

Old hardware accounted for something like 40% of all sales. If you're going to be tossing aside almost half of all potential sales, the development costs need to come way down as well to match.
 
Perhaps, but Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't have been the same game only more polished had it been released solely as a PC and next gen title.

Old hardware accounted for something like 40% of all sales. If you're going to be tossing aside almost half of all potential sales, the development costs need to come way down as well to match.

where did you find the 40% info? does it include refunds? Is that download sales only or overall sales?
 
Or, and here's a thought, that they wanted to give the many, many, many people with last gen machines, still half their audience, a chance to try the game. Note - glitchy though it may be, there are many reports of playable experiences on last gen.

No, I don't personally go for, "they did it for the poor console gamers" narrative, nor does that excuse the state of the game for the consoles. It is simple. CDPR made the choice to release for those consoles, they did, and now they have to sort this mess out. This all seems like another attempt to deflect blame and customer shaming. The buck stops with CDPR on this one. This whole thread will only serve for a round of console bashing and misinformation, so i'm surprised it is being encouraged to continue, although it does help those supportive of CDPR's actions deflect the blame.
 
The only mistake was not being able to design and optimize the game for the well-known hardware they planned to make the game for 8 years ago.

Also, the vast majority of the game's flaws are due to bad design choices and incapacity in implementing features, in particular AI, not hardware limits.
 
where did you find the 40% info? does it include refunds? Is that download sales only or overall sales?

I was in error. 59% of sales were for the PC as of December of 2020, so the remainder would be split between older & newer consoles. That said it is a safe bet that the majority of console sales were for old hardware, because that is what the majority of console players would have likely had even before taking into account supply line issues, scalpers, and the difficulties in even getting a new console.

Whatever the actual sales numbers for old consoles, if the game hadn't been planned to release on them, the development budget would need to tighten up accordingly. At the end of the day CDPR is a business and the objective is to maximize profit, so if a development decision (such as not releasing for base consoles) is going to cause potential sales numbers to take a hit, the amount of money devoted to making the thing is going to scale back accordingly as well.
 
I was in error. 59% of sales were for the PC as of December of 2020, so the remainder would be split between older & newer consoles. That said it is a safe bet that the majority of console sales were for old hardware, because that is what the majority of console players would have likely had even before taking into account supply line issues, scalpers, and the difficulties in even getting a new console.

Whatever the actual sales numbers for old consoles, if the game hadn't been planned to release on them, the development budget would need to tighten up accordingly. At the end of the day CDPR is a business and the objective is to maximize profit, so if a development decision (such as not releasing for base consoles) is going to cause potential sales numbers to take a hit, the amount of money devoted to making the thing is going to scale back accordingly as well.

I wouldn't expect them to never release for consoles, I was saying they had a few options

1) delay console release, possibly getting another company to do it to save time
2)make the game for old gen consoles, and limit the games design by old Gen.
3) do what they did.


I prefer 1, but I'm biased. 3 probably didnt effect me much, but console people on social media suggest they d have preferred a delay. Not sure if thats true, but that's what people seem to be suggesting
 
At the end of the day CDPR is a business and the objective is to maximize profit,

I think that's pretty simplistic. If that was the case, there would have been no free DLC for the Witcher series, there would have been monetization everywhere. CDPR makes good (very good) money, but they are nowhere near Electronic Arts or Take 2 or Microsoft, multi-billion dollar net sales companies.

The objective is not just to maximize profit, no, or GoG wouldn't have a 30-day return policy, for example. Why do that? They had it before 2077 release too. Why not wait and release 2077 when it's perfect? They had plenty of money and stock price before release, at 400 and change, was excellent. Sure it dropped with every delay, then came back. Witcher 3 provided steady revenue every quarter.

If it was so much about money, why not do the smart thing and just keep working? Cut out all the features that aren't copy/paste from GTA, while you're at it. Get some paid cosmetics in there.

The amount of naivete and monocolour viewpoints I see here about business is remarkable. Not targetting you specifically, but most people have no idea what it takes to start, run and grow a business. "Maximising profit" is easy to type, but that's about it.

Old consoles happened because CDPR said they do it, it was half or more of their audience and that's it. Maybe they thought it would be fine for base PS4, (can't see that) but releasing a severely buggy game that doesn't even work on your target platform is -not- what you do if you want to maximize profit.
 
I think that's pretty simplistic. If that was the case, there would have been no free DLC for the Witcher series, there would have been monetization everywhere. CDPR makes good (very good) money, but they are nowhere near Electronic Arts or Take 2 or Microsoft, multi-billion dollar net sales companies.

The objective is not just to maximize profit, no, or GoG wouldn't have a 30-day return policy, for example. Why do that? They had it before 2077 release too. Why not wait and release 2077 when it's perfect? They had plenty of money and stock price before release, at 400 and change, was excellent. Sure it dropped with every delay, then came back. Witcher 3 provided steady revenue every quarter.

If it was so much about money, why not do the smart thing and just keep working? Cut out all the features that aren't copy/paste from GTA, while you're at it. Get some paid cosmetics in there.

The amount of naivete and monocolour viewpoints I see here about business is remarkable. Not targetting you specifically, but most people have no idea what it takes to start, run and grow a business. "Maximising profit" is easy to type, but that's about it.

Old consoles happened because CDPR said they do it, it was half or more of their audience and that's it. Maybe they thought it would be fine for base PS4, (can't see that) but releasing a severely buggy game that doesn't even work on your target platform is -not- what you do if you want to maximize profit.

Counterpoint: CDPR not only released a game on base consoles long before it was ready, they actively tried to deceive players about the state of the game on base consoles so their preorder numbers wouldn't take a hit.

A corporation pulled a highly anti-consumer corporate move. No one should have been surprised by this.

It's always about the money with corporations. Anything else is just PR to maximize goodwill with customers that translates into sales.
 
A corporation pulled a highly anti-consumer corporate move. No one should have been surprised by this.

It's always about the money with corporations. Anything else is just PR to maximize goodwill with customers that translates into sales.

"It's always" tends to be, again, simplistic. It's rarely so black and white. You seem to have assigned greed ( stupid greed, since it cost them hugely) where lack of judgement was the probable cause.

Now you have CDPR as both malevolent and dumb. And yet smart enough to get there in the first place. Lot of contradictions here. All corporations are always about money - and there are no examples to the contrary ever. And never can be.

A corporation is a legal entity. I have three of them. These are just businesses run by people. Some are all about money - others use the money to do what they dream of.

If you form a corporation tomorrow to sell home-made doghouses, your dream job, does that make it all about the money suddenly? No.

The console screw up was a screw up, compounded by deception based, if I had to guess, on shame.
 
I wonder how much getting CP to run suitably on last gen hardware is not only a futile effort, but doubly causing real harm to the potential of CP truly becoming that masterpiece we all hope it will be. This patch will be telling.

This.

I don't know what deal CD Projekt did with Sony and Microsoft about supporting last-gen consoles, but I really think that it's a decision which has seriously impacted the quality of the game on all platforms, and that the programming resources which have been diverted to try to get it to work on obsolete hardware is part of the reason that so much else is unfinished.

I'm kind of hoping that by the time they get around to releasing Cyberpunk's equivalent of Blood and Wine, they'll say, OK, this expansion isn't going to run on antiques, and we won't support it on them.
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Old hardware accounted for something like 40% of all sales. If you're going to be tossing aside almost half of all potential sales, the development costs need to come way down as well to match.

We know for certain that PC sales were 80% of all sales¹, so last-gen consoles could only, at max, be 20%, and that assumes no sales at all on current-gen consoles, which is obviously nuts. So what I think you're saying is that last-gen was 40% of 20%, which is 8%. Which really was not worth doing since it ruined the launch and will have dragged sales on all platforms down.

¹ Well, strictly, of all online sales. But, seriously, no-one buys games on DVDs any more. Online sales will be the overwhelming preponderance of all sales.
 
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"It's always" tends to be, again, simplistic. It's rarely so black and white. You seem to have assigned greed ( stupid greed, since it cost them hugely) where lack of judgement was the probable cause.

Now you have CDPR as both malevolent and dumb. And yet smart enough to get there in the first place. Lot of contradictions here. All corporations are always about money - and there are no examples to the contrary ever. And never can be.

A corporation is a legal entity. I have three of them. These are just businesses run by people. Some are all about money - others use the money to do what they dream of.

If you form a corporation tomorrow to sell home-made doghouses, your dream job, does that make it all about the money suddenly? No.

The console screw up was a screw up, compounded by deception based, if I had to guess, on shame.

You are one person.

If any of those three corporations grow to be the size of CDPR, with yearly profits that are over $100,000,000, it's not going to be just about you. CDPR has over 1,000 employees as well as shareholders that expect a return on their investment.

I also didn't necessarily say that CDPR was "malevolent." That is entirely your insertion and a strawman as well. I just said that they're a corporation as such profit will be the first priority. Businesses *only* exist to earn profit and they cease to exist when they aren't. I also said that the decision to release the game on base consoles in that state and the deception that accompanied it was anti-consumer. That is also a fact, regardless of the motives behind it. I did not however state that everything CDPR ever did was anti-consumer.

One can also have altruistic motives in wanting to keep revenue flowing. After all the job security of every employee of that company depends on that company's continued financial success.

To be clear on my opinion of CDPR so that is not misconstrued in further replies...I neither view them as inherently malevolent or benevolent. Many fans however seemed to view them as being the latter, at least prior to the release of CP 2077 and after the release of TW3. It is mistake to view any company that way. They care about selling their product first and foremost. With that in mind, preordering is never not a mistake.

I'm also not quite certain why we're currently having this exchange. CDPR released the game in a thoroughly broken state on base consoles, and lied about the state of the game on base consoles in the run up to release. What other possible motive for that could there be other than it being one driven by profit?
 
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The console screw up was a screw up, compounded by deception based, if I had to guess, on shame.

I would agree with this. For all of the various arguments and conspiracies going around, I personally feel that this was all the result of a number of mistakes, some small, some larger and CDPR taking the eye off the ball, but I don't think it was out of greed or malice. It has been the perfect storm, largely of CDPR's own making, but that doesn't mean heads have to roll. What is important is the actions taken to remedy the situation going forward.
 
This.

I don't know what deal CD Projekt did with Sony and Microsoft about supporting last-gen consoles, but I really think that it's a decision which has seriously impacted the quality of the game on all platforms, and that the programming resources which have been diverted to try to get it to work on obsolete hardware is part of the reason that so much else is unfinished.

I'm kind of hoping that by the time they get around to releasing Cyberpunk's equivalent of Blood and Wine, they'll say, OK, this expansion isn't going to run on antiques, and we won't support it on them.
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We know for certain that PC sales were 80% of all sales¹, so last-gen consoles could only, at max, be 20%, and that assumes no sales at all on current-gen consoles, which is obviously nuts. So what I think you're saying is that last-gen was 40% of 20%, which is 8%. Which really was not worth doing since it ruined the launch and will have dragged sales on all platforms down.

¹ Well, strictly, of all online sales. But, seriously, no-one buys games on DVDs any more. Online sales will be the overwhelming preponderance of all sales.
I do would like to point out 2 things. Regardless of wether its nearly impossible to determine their impact/influence, they remain true:
1) for PS the store was closed, so sales were missed there. This includes last gens. PS4 could've had more sales seeing the entire PS5 unavailability.
2) you highlight it yourself: digital sales. I've read somewhere that still 26% were physical copies. If I were to make assumptions into 'the other direction' the largest amount here could very well be the (last gen) console copies that were ordered physically (I for one have)

Its easy to time and time again dismiss last gens or consoles. But fact remains they are supported. And CDPR has stated to fix whats broken.
Also this constant clamoring on that future content should no longer support last gens really has to stop.
 
Yeah, it kinda was, from a development perspective at least. Releasing on last-gen makes perfect business sense, though, next-gen consoles have currently sold only a fraction of the units last-gen consoles have sold in their lifetime, so leaving out last-gen consoles would dramatically reduce the game's potential first-day sales, which is a big no-no for investors.

The fact that the game even runs at all on 7 year old (and in some cases quite bad) hardware is a goddamn miracle.
 
I guess it depends on the feasibility of offering the game as it was built on the target hardware spectrum. It's conceivably possible the thought process was fine but the execution was flawed. Aka, they didn't put in the necessary time, underestimated the difficulty or took a poor approach to the "problem" itself.

If, for whatever reason, it wasn't feasible to toss this game on base consoles then I'd expect two options would exist.

1. Drop support for base consoles (not sure all of "last gen" works given availability of "next gen"). This wouldn't be a good idea at the last minute. Sometime in the middle it might have been an option. The specifics here determine whether this was even viable. As a player I don't know the specifics. So #1 is going off the assumption it was a viable choice.

2. Reel in the vision, scale back on the "it's next gen" hype bandwagon and focus on the platforms being supported. Specifically, base consoles. This game isn't exactly "next gen" as far as I can tell. Outside of a few technical areas (seamless world, scope of NC). If the old guard can't handle these technical areas as they were going to be designed the solution is simple. Don't do it that way.

I suspect in the coming months, as CDPR attempts to course correct the base console versions of the game, we will get an answer to whether it was feasible.

We know for certain that PC sales were 80% of all sales¹, so last-gen consoles could only, at max, be 20%, and that assumes no sales at all on current-gen consoles, which is obviously nuts. So what I think you're saying is that last-gen was 40% of 20%, which is 8%. Which really was not worth doing since it ruined the launch and will have dragged sales on all platforms down.

¹ Well, strictly, of all online sales. But, seriously, no-one buys games on DVDs any more. Online sales will be the overwhelming preponderance of all sales.

Only if you trust the source providing the statistics. I'll leave that one ambiguous.
 
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