Q3 2021 Earnings Call implications and impressions.

+
I want to enjoy the game. And I know I will! There is way too many things in it to just give up on Cyberpunk. And the game CAN be fixed. It's just mechanical glitches. Issues within coding. I hate playing games that ruined their own potential. I played way too many of them already.
Im aware of its many flaws but I believe in this game and in CD Projekt (it's the sole company that has given me something akin to what I seek in a game, at least in recent years), if there's a company I am utterly disappointed with is Bioware, whose next products I won't even poke with a stick at this point :disapprove:
 
Im aware of its many flaws but I believe in this game and in CD Projekt (it's the sole company that has given me something akin to what I seek in a game, at least in recent years), if there's a company I am utterly disappointed with is Bioware, whose next products I won't even poke with a stick at this point :disapprove:
I am disappointed in Bethesda ever since Fallout 3. :D

CDPR is the only company I trusted in this industry. They created GOG, they went out of their ways to deliver The Witcher 3 and go against trends of overly monetized franchises. I wanted the entire industry to go in that direction. I wanted CDPR to show everybody The Way. Like SpaceX is with their reusable rockets. With landing vertically on a frickin boat in the middle of the ocean! And the only thing CDPR did with CP2077 is to show that it's impossible to be honest, earnest, open, consumer friendly and on top of that deliver a great game. And that's the problem. Now nobody will even think about going free-dlc and payed content worth paying, not to mention going DRM-free.

CDPR's failure with CP2077 is a failure for the entire industry.
 
I am disappointed in Bethesda ever since Fallout 3. :D

CDPR is the only company I trusted in this industry. They created GOG, they went out of their ways to deliver The Witcher 3 and go against trends of overly monetized franchises. I wanted the entire industry to go in that direction. I wanted CDPR to show everybody The Way. Like SpaceX is with their reusable rockets. With landing vertically on a frickin boat in the middle of the ocean! And the only thing CDPR did with CP2077 is to show that it's impossible to be honest, earnest, open, consumer friendly and on top of that deliver a great game. And that's the problem. Now nobody will even think about going free-dlc and payed content worth paying, not to mention going DRM-free.

CDPR's failure with CP2077 is a failure for the entire industry.
Hard to disagree with such an obvious fact :facepalm:
 
They are seperate but of couse will be released at the same time. A bundle.

The reason for the separation is that some consoles (and PC to an extent) won't get the upgrades / have them already.

Basically, all platforms will probably get 1.5 but the next gen edition will be contained to PC and next gen consoles. That's the distinction they're making.

How are they going to release two patches on the same day? At least on next gen.
 
How are they going to release two patches on the same day? At least on next gen.
I would imagine the patch will be a pushed update same as the rest and have been and the "next gen" will be an optional update, at least on ps5 this seems to be the way other games have approached it. You then end up with a PS4 version and PS5 version in the library (for example NMS and Skyrim both did this you then chose to import your PS4 saves or start fresh)
 
Its a very subjective statement, you can find similar statements with CDPR and how bad was for industry The Witcher III.
You do but the message behind that statement is vastly different.
TW3 was bad for the industry as other studios had to put immense amounts of effort to try coming close to its quality.
CP77 on the other hand has shown that seemingly not even CDPR is willing to put those amounts of effort into it anymore. The leading example of glory has quickly descended to match the rest of the competitors.
 
TW3 was bad for the industry as other studios had to put immense amounts of effort to try coming close to its quality.
No the complain was related to weak/bad/lack of certain mechanics in TW3 and how promoting it as a "template" for other studios was going to result in other games with the same "issues".And i don't want to summon forum moderators,but you can find this just googling(even in the witcher iii forum i think).
 
First of all: everything they said in this call is a subject to change. Nothing is set in stone. They can tell you now that they "target" at something, and then after a while they can say "well, that was then, now it's different".

OK, so if I understand it correctly:

1. GOG is basically making no money. They are literally under with GOG. The most of the earnings comes from whatever Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 earns. Unless I understand it all wrong.
From what CDPR says, it's because GOG and Gwent are one entity, so if Gwent is not making any money but generates costs, those costs hurt GOG's numbers. So CDPR is moving Gwent team under CD Projekt RED. So GOG numbers look better. Still, if your online store is not making enough money to cover for a card game...

2. If I understand the corpo-speech correctly, the word "provisions" means "we have money to spend". And if I got it right, the money they made on Cyberpunk will let them carry on for another 4 years. The entirety of the company will ride on the money that Cyberpunk made so far for the next 4 years.

. . . . .

I haven't listened to the call, or read the English transcript yet. But in a financial report context, "provision" is usually synonymous with "allowance", or "reserve". It's something that the company builds into its financial statements when it either expects to reverse some portion of revenues, or increase some portion of expenses. As a practical matter, it does sometimes mean that they had a really good year, and are setting up a financial cookie jar for future years, so that if they have a bad year, they can reverse out the provision and make the year look not quite so bad.

I was surprise to see that GOG is losing money. I thought it had been a consistent money maker in prior years. I wonder how much of this is due to disasters like the Hitman mistake?
 
GOG was never as profitable as all the other online gaming stores out there. It was always running on a promise and on faith of CDPR fans. And faith that one day the industry will take a turn.
 
No the complain was related to weak/bad/lack of certain mechanics in TW3 and how promoting it as a "template" for other studios was going to result in other games with the same "issues".And i don't want to summon forum moderators,but you can find this just googling(even in the witcher iii forum i think).
And yet TW3 is basically unanimously one of the best games of this planet. Nobody even tried copying its scheme, let alone succeed. Why?
I assume it's the sheer amount of quality that overshadows the few lacking features, which weren't really of importance to the vast majority of players in the first place anyways.

Most of those articles were written by the same people who we now describe as pseudo journalists when it comes to CP77. Why did their opinion matter, if they're not relevant? It didn't. See, the reality is a certain percentage of people is bound to complain no matter what. Controversy means money, and criticizing something obviously good has obvious effects.

But the argument is not becoming a certain game template to fill out. The argument is being the last beloved dev studio and potentially losing that quality.

For the vast majority of cases a games failure is a games failure. With CP77 many people view the games failure as the studios failure. And I don't blame them. If anything, I'm one one them. As greeks said, faith played a big role.

Summoning moderators? Must be a power I subconsciously learned at some point ;)
 
For me a bit worring was that they didnt want to confirm dlc for 2022 (which they kinda confirmed earier this year) which might look like it wont be released before Q4.
They still have enough time to talk to literally everybody but their customers.
I hope it's not their way of understanding improved communication.
CDPR will not confirm or deny anything at the time being. This is their current stand on communication, i.e. no communication is good communication. The mentioned a release date for the next-gen upgrade, which is why we got an update. However, they didn't say anything about expansions and they won't do so until it fits their goals.


3. If I understand the corpo-speech correctly, the word "sentiment" means "how much the customers like us". And CDPR is aware of the fact that "the sentiment" is not in their favour right now. You can simp for the company all you want over here, but the general consensus seems to be "meh, buggy". Their priority right now is to make us believe that CDPR is our friend.
According to Steam, 75% have a positive opinion about the game. Thus, I would argue the customer sentiment is good but not at the same levels as Witcher 3. (Especially regarding that the state of Cyberpunk 2077 at its release has probably also led to some way of review-bombing.)


12. Employee turnover: CDPR sees nothing strange in leaking talent all the time. In their opinion it's a natural process that they can't keep talented people around.
I also agree with the notion that this is common in the industry.


Just another thought in the subject: they said that they are "aiming" at first quarter of 2022. But we all know how good is the aim of CDPR nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if both the patch and Next-Gen version of the game was pushed back into Q2 of 2022 or even further back if the game is still not ready to be released.
I disagree with this assumption and I detail why in this thread:


Im aware of its many flaws but I believe in this game and in CD Projekt (it's the sole company that has given me something akin to what I seek in a game, at least in recent years), if there's a company I am utterly disappointed with is Bioware, whose next products I won't even poke with a stick at this point :disapprove:
Likewise, CDPR is still in my good favour contrary to Bioware. This means that I buy games from the company without reading any kind of reviews to avoid spoilers. I even pre-order the games because I want to support the company, but if one of their games fails - from my perspective - I read review and make I might way for a sale. (In the case of Anthem, I don't buy it at all...)

I would imagine the patch will be a pushed update same as the rest and have been and the "next gen" will be an optional update, at least on ps5 this seems to be the way other games have approached it. You then end up with a PS4 version and PS5 version in the library (for example NMS and Skyrim both did this you then chose to import your PS4 saves or start fresh)
I assume 1.5 will be the next-gen upgrade and for current-gen consoles 1.5 will include raytracing while it will be a normal patch for PC and last-gen consoles.

I hope it means "we are improving stuff that exists in the game but is basically broken". "Systems that are <<general to the game>>, it's not a revolution but they can interact with other systems of the game so we have to be sure that there is no regression whatsoever, and mostly for this we need some extra time for testing"
I will not demand from them any patches and/or any content anymore, as long as they are working on improving the game. I still haven't played past the prologue and I am willing to wait. I would be really glad if Patch 1.5 was really the last patch that is needed though. The game has to be fixed properly. No half-assed quick-fixes. Stuff that is broken-- repaired. Stuff that is out of wack-- tweaked. All the core elements of the open world-- properly developed. There has to be NO cutting corners with this re-release.
If the next big patch doesn't involve AI updates and PROPER content fixing the disappointment will be off the roof once again...
Bug fixes and a cosmetic overhaul won't be enough, I really hope CDPR is doing the right thing considering the huge amount of time they are taking.
I am not concerned with what the game will look like on current gen consoles. I am only concerned about the game having no bugs and being improved throughout. I consider poor optimisation, poor textures streaming, graphical glitches and anything that doesn't work as intended as a "bug". The amount of those casued me to not wanting to play CP2077 at all. They said that they will fix the game. I am still waiting for them to do that.
In this regard, I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment. CDPR has stated that they are satisfied with the state of the game, so every change will be evolutionary, not revolutionary. So, do yourself a favour and keep that in mind. There won't be a skill system overhaul, there won't be significant changes in the game's AI and things like that. The game will be improved and skills will we fixed, but it seems to me that you are demanding too much.

In regards to the bugs related to graphical glitches, I assume many of them will be fixed but it might very well be that some are unfixable due to platform constrains.
 
Just like I did last time I've spent some time listening to the Q3 earnings call. With the news being lacking these webcasts provide a little bit of insight into what's going on with Cyberpunk even though these aren't aimed at us. And even if this earnings call confirms what we already know it's a least a conformation that work is proceeding as planned and we have nothing to worry about.

Starting off, CDPR is continuing the trend established in the last meeting with them transferring more people off of patching cyberpunk to the expansion (and other stuff). The interesting thing to note here is that they transferred fewer employees over than last time. Based on the meeting I got the impression that they are still working hard making the game good for next-gen consoles. This is inline with CDPR's statement that they aren't focused on patching anymore.

Despite that though, the next gen release is still on track for Q1 2022. I wouldn't have expected much else. They could push it all the way to the end of Q1 2021 which is still far away. They said that we'll get more news on that next year. So nothing for 2021 (kinda as expected).

They also noted the increase in positive reviews on steam and an increase in sales :)

View attachment 11265805

I've also listened to the webcast. The interesting part of that to us is the QA panel at the end. Most of this will be a bit paraphrased. I tried to focus as much on Cyberpunk as I could.



They wanted to stress 1.5 is a big update. They confirmed in the second question they're releasing it as one big pack to "increase the impact".


"It'll be ready when it's ready" of course! :ohstopit:


Although it's more visible on PC CDPR is also seeing improvement on every platform. It's nice to hear they're also having a better experience.


They're staying flexible. So who knows.




Apart from the obvious increase in graphical quality they're also looking at improving "systems, so that there's no regression". Don't quite know what to take from that. But this confirms my expectation that they're really treating this as a second launch. They really stressed here they wanted it to be polished.


The interesting take here is that they're gonna wait to see what happens with the next-gen edition before they do so. This could mean that if it releases well we could see follow up DLC. If it doesn't it might mean more patching.


They're planning to add it to Cyberpunk. Also a second franchise will get it. They're planning on adding it "Step by step, gradually". Whether that was to the first game or Cyberpunk I didn't quite hear but it's nice to know they're not gonna drop a fully formed multiplayer on us in one go.



Do it right this time CDPR <3.

So, that was my summary. Some interesting things were said here, most of them obvious. It's nice to hear them confirmed at least. Any thoughts on this? have you listened to it yourself? Did I miss or misheard something? I'd love to know!

EDIT: Spelling and formatting.
Thanks for the info, the game was unfairly shat upon on release
 
I'm happy to read that my idea that they wanted a soft release with the next gen patch together, stressed by an important number (1.5 instead of 1.4) is the same CDPR has. And that they want it polished, because another bugged version would be very stupid marketing-wise. Good for my ego.

That being said, we'll see what they deliver this time, you know, they claimed many things and many times...
 
I'm happy to read that my idea that they wanted a soft release with the next gen patch together, stressed by an important number (1.5 instead of 1.4) is the same CDPR has. And that they want it polished, because another bugged version would be very stupid marketing-wise. Good for my ego.

That being said, we'll see what they deliver this time, you know, they claimed many things and many times...

I'm curious what Cyberpunk 2.0 is gonna look like. Since it really doesn't matter what patch number it's called. Is that when Expansion 1 releases? Who knows.
 
Last edited:
I'm curious what Cyberpunk 2.0 is gonna look like. Since it really doesn't matter what patch number is called. Is that when Expansion 1 releases? Who knows.
It'll look exactly the same but more polished and with some additional quality of life features. My 2 cents are 2.0 when multiplayer is added in 2 years or so. Ok maybe 3.0 if it's actually in 2024.
 
I am disappointed in Bethesda ever since Fallout 3. :D

CDPR is the only company I trusted in this industry. They created GOG, they went out of their ways to deliver The Witcher 3 and go against trends of overly monetized franchises. I wanted the entire industry to go in that direction. I wanted CDPR to show everybody The Way. Like SpaceX is with their reusable rockets. With landing vertically on a frickin boat in the middle of the ocean! And the only thing CDPR did with CP2077 is to show that it's impossible to be honest, earnest, open, consumer friendly and on top of that deliver a great game. And that's the problem. Now nobody will even think about going free-dlc and payed content worth paying, not to mention going DRM-free.

CDPR's failure with CP2077 is a failure for the entire industry.
Agree with everything except the last sentence. I only see downsides to generalizing complex processes of game development into one sentence or argument. To me CP's failure had much more to do with a company that grew very fast without the propper transition into a more functional structure of work; all the comunication problems that result from this; execs getting in the way of the content being created and many more issues within an organization made of people.
So to say if a company goes for the "good way of working", tries to offer meaninful content without exploring their customers or getting them addicted to loot boxes, it will fail like CDPR has is, to me, very distant from what happened and the danger of generalization.
 
Top Bottom