[IronRanger]

The major underappreciated factor for this release is the impact of COVID lockdowns - particularly enforced WFH - on the final development of this title.

For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight.

Still, I think CDPR were right to release the game. Its good enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-gen consoles.

Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public bugs.

Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants, workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).

[jontaydev]

There is a theory that development was restarted several times, most notably in 2018 to incorporate Keanu into the main story. It seems like they couldn't stick to a singular vision and shifted goals too many times.

[TT3351]

I hope we get a sequel to Schreier's Anthem article for this game [he now works for Bloomberg]. Many repeating patterns.

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

[overgard]

I really don't understand why they have Keanu in this. I mean the _character_ he plays is fine, and Keanu's performance is fine, I just don't understand the appeal/necessity of getting the likeness of a real world actor in a digital game. I imagine it also must have cost a fortune..

It doesn't detract from the game or anything, but it just seems like an odd way to spend a limited development budget.

[mekkkkkk]

I think the hype speaks for itself, doesn't it? You want people to talk about your product, and having an A-list celebrity involved does just that. If you then categorize the extra expense under "marketing", I'd say it's not a bad ROI compared to other, incredibly expensive, marketing efforts.

[burntoutfire]

For the same reason why Hollywood producers pay $10m for a Brad Pitt, where they could get some rando who looks and acts just as good for $100k - Brad is marketing device, the movie will get much more publicity because of him, and people will go see the movie just because of him. Same for Keanu here.

[overgard]

I'm curious if that's actually true though. A lot of recent huge hits in TV at least were made up of casts of either relative unknowns or people that didn't have huge star power anymore. "Stranger Things", as one example. Mad Men and Breaking Bad created a lot of stars, but they weren't famous to start with. The Walking Dead was the most popular show on TV for a long time and I can't really recall an A-lister.

Even a lot of much older shows didn't need star power. Think about something like Star Trek TNG. The most famous person on that cast when it started was Will Wheaton. Obviously Patrick Stewart became huge but he was a total unknown prior.

[f6v]

Which I never understood: how is an actor supposed to suddenly carry the whole game? I mean, he's got those cool movies(where he plays the same guy over and over again), but he's no Jesus to be worshiped like that.

[themacguffinman]

His impact on the game is probably similar to that of a celebrity in an ad: the celebrity isn't cast because of their acting/posing ability, they're just very likeable, recognizable people that you want to associate your product with. The electric reception he received at the game announcement show and the reddit memes he has generated seem to prove this. No one was under any illusions that Keanu was going to elevate the story, they just really love Keanu.

[mhh__]

He's also, bluntly, not a very good actor

[mcv]

He's a great person. His acting range is limited, but within that range, he's good at what he does. Whether that makes him a suitable actor for a computer game is debatable, but on the other hand, he's also a beloved actor, so it's probably good PR.

I have no problem with them including Keanu in the game. I do have a problem with crunch and releasing a very buggy game.

[f6v]

I take Tom Hanks or Bill Murray over Keanu any time, but he's extremely dedicated. The amount of work he put into gun and martial arts training...Maybe that's part of being a good actor, after all.

[meibo]

His lines in this game... Sometimes I'm really just cringing at how demotivated/drunk/high they either want him to sound or he sounds by default.

[Quarrelsome]

some actors are just pretty faces. Orlando Bloom also springs to mind.

[platz]

You make it sound like having a leading role in a game is the highest honor in the land one can bestow upon an individual.

[angelbar]

Or Maradona

[rowanG077]

Yeah. It's pretty obvious. It's quite interesting how more games end up like that. Final fantasy 15 was restarted twice as well. And it ended up having potential but alas it was unfinished.

[BitwiseFool]

I still have no idea why all these big game developers are releasing new titles and still supporting last gen hardware. You would think games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Halo Infinite would be launch titles that would entice people to buy new consoles.

[InitialLastName]

Cyberpunk 2077 is ~2 years delayed and was marketed heavily as the pinnacle of what the last generation of consoles could do, to the extent that they released a limited edition Xbox One X bundle for the game [0]. They couldn't exactly do that and then not sell it on that console, could they?

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-console-cyb...

[spike021]

This wasn't originally meant to be only for the next-gen consoles. It was advertised as being for the current gen with improvements for the next-gen consoles once released.

On the other hand, there are still games being released now that work and look perfectly fine on PS4. Spider-Man looks and plays great on my base PS4 non-Pro. Miles Morales had some crashes and bugs but those were patched within two weeks and now that game works smoothly and looks beautiful on my older PS4.

You could argue that it's a first-party game and it gets better attention due to that.

I understand Cyberpunk 2077 won't look nearly as good on my PS4 compared to PC's or PS5's, but there's no reason it should have PS2-era graphics/pop-in...

[mattnewton]

This game was clearly overmarketed early on. Everyone at CDPR was evidently far too optimistic about what could be achieved in a few years on last gen console hardware and how fast they could churn out content vs optimize the core gameplay. The end result is an unfinished mess on anything other than great pc hardware or stadia with a great network connection.

[save_ferris]

Two problems with that. A) New consoles are pretty tightly supply-limited on release, so people won't buy the game until they know they can pick up the console. You've totally killed the preorder market.

B) You risk losing even more game sales towards the end of the console lifecycle, as soon as rumors start flying around about new hardware about to hit the market.

[mdoms]

You really have no idea? The number of people on previous gen consoles dwarfs the people on new console, especially in a world where new consoles can't even nearly keep up with demand.

[BitwiseFool]

But wouldn't this be true for every console generation? I'm used to seeing launch titles drive new hardware sales.

[mekkkkkk]

This is true for some games that basically has "drive console sales" as part of the mission statement. In those cases, the game studios are getting economic incentives from the console company to focus on next-gen, even if the market share is smaller. In other cases the studios themselves are controlled by the same company that sells the consoles. See Gears of War, Halo etc.

If the mission is simply "sell as many copies as possible", it will always make sense to not ignore the largest market share. This is why CP2077 is not having proper next-gen features, but is rather running the same (poorly optimized) last-gen build on both systems. Ironic as it sounds, it seems like the focus was to provide a serviceable experience for last-gen gamers first and foremost.

They clearly failed on that front. So now they have a poorly running game on last-gen, and a gimped one on next-gen.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

[mdoms]

The latest console generation is literally a couple of weeks old. At this point in the lifecycle yes it's absolutely true of every generation.

[rsanheim]

I imagine one very real reason right now is that most people cannot buy the new consoles right now, or at least don't want to play the in-stock game to try to snag one when they drop and are available for 5 minutes at retailers.

So lots of people who have the last gen hardware see that the new consoles are constantly out of stock, and decide that they are 'good enough' for now until you can actually just order a new console w/o hassle. That may not be till well into the new year.

[pavon]

The launch date for this game got pushed back multiple times. It was originally targeted for the then current gen consoles, and had many pre-orders on those consoles.

[Guthur]

Market reach, the new consoles have just released and are very hard to get.

Big AAA need plenty of market reach to be profitable unless they have some exclusivity deal.

[MBCook]

There are only a few million of each new console sold. Even if you somehow managed to sell to 75% of the owners, that’s not many people.

[notional]

Wiki says Cyberpunk started development in 2016. Wiki also says hardware design for Xbox Series X started in 2018.

Wouldn't Cyberpunk team have been developing the game for 2 years before rumors even surfaced about the development of a next gen console?

The time lines don't seem like they line up to only building it for a next gen console that didn't have hardware architecture planned out yet.

[Merman_Mike]

FTA:

> We have an internal QA department and we’re working with external companies as well. One thing that perhaps didn’t help us is COVID: internal testers are able to test the game working from home because we provide them with our own connected machines and so on, but external testers working for external companies were not able to test the game from homes –they have test centers and if they’re not there, they’re not able to work. So, we have seen a decrease in the number of testers, but I wouldn’t point to it as a major source of problems.

[voter101]

With how badly this game turned out, I can only guess that lack of testers and bug reports was last on the priority list of problems.

[Pfhreak]

> For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game.

This is absolutely not the case. The game was in dire straights long before Covid. (When did Poland lockdown?)

It's not clear to me that you can make the claim you made without providing some additional evidence as everything I've read about the project suggests that it has been in development for 8+ years, and has had a real rough go of things.