[Pfhreak]

The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar.

That said, knowing you have a broken game and saying it's great is extremely avoidable and totally should stop. Tell me the game is a mess and let me play with it.

[falcolas]

> releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar.

Only if you're holding yourself to an impossible deadline. Given time – and, I'll argue, developers who weren't burnt out by the work schedule – and this could have been resolved. But they didn't take that time, they went ahead with a non-functional game just to meet the deadline.

They abused their developers to meet an (demonstrably) impossible deadline. This is a terribly way to run a business on many levels.

[Pfhreak]

I'm not sure that's actually true. Having worked in the industry, games do not always get better with more work and time. Some systems are just too complicated to fix fast than bugs get introduced.

[enahs-sf]

Having played Cyberpunk on a PS4 and then a PS5, It is nowhere near what you'd expect from a AAA title in terms of quality. Had to stop playing it because it's not worth it to ruin the experience.

I can only imagine what the folks at Rockstar are thinking about this launch and what they can take away from it.

[krzyk]

And to have a counterpoint, I'm playing on PC and have a lot of fun. I've seen so far only one bug (Panams phone somehow freezed in mid air during her talking scene)

I must say that I'm a bit glad that this time consoles were taken less seriously than a PC, in majority of cases is quite opposite (with a few exceptions like GTA V and CP2077).

[jjoonathan]

My PC experience was good too. I saw the "T-pose on a motorcycle" bug a couple times and I sequence-broke a mission once, but that's it. If 2077 had been enterprise software, it would be the smoothest and least-buggy enterprise software I had ever used by a mile.

It sounds like last-gen consoles leaned very heavily on the LOD system, it caused more bugs than expected, and they didn't allocate enough time to fix them.

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

I played the game on PC too, and for the first half or so of the game I agree, the first half of the game was more "very very unpolished and rough" as opposed to "broken bugs".

However it got worse and worse the closer I got to the finale, on total I encountered around 10-12 situations that prevented me from continuing and required game restarts and/or loading of older saves, and I had to repeat my final mission 3 times because of a game breaking bug. That is on top of all the minor bugs others have already mentioned.

While I was able to at least get between 50 and 80 fps, the performance was absolutely terrible if I consider my specs (>3500$ PC build).

All in all I was "relatively bug free" compared to the experiences of others. What I don't understand are people saying it would be "a masterpiece" without the bugs, I disagree, the game was very bland in my opinion and I regret my purchase and the time I invested regardless of the bugs and problems. It wasn't TERRIBLE, but I wish I had spent the money on another game.

[nonamenoslogan]

Geeesh I get 40-70 fps on a $250 GPU in a $100ish PC from the recycle pile.

[jasonladuke0311]

You are fortunate. I've encountered at least two dozen different bugs that were only resolved with a reload (or in some cases reverting to a previous save). And the crashes, my god. I would wager at least one crash per hour or two of play.

That being said, I think it's a fantastic game (though somewhat shallow in terms of choice) that I am still having a great time with.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Yeah, I'm finishing up round 2 of the game and loving it with a few annoying bugs, but nothing that killed my joy. I'm finding it an excellent experience that's sucked me in way harder than any game in a long long time. I really left heart with the Aldecados.

[threeseed]

> I can only imagine what the folks at Rockstar are thinking

I imagine they are thinking the same thing since GTA5 Online was released.

Why even bother making new games when you can just drip feed some DLC every now and again and continue to print billions.

[ethbr0]

I'm not going to say that's a worse model.

We saw outsourcing of engines to companies who focused on that as their core competency. Then middleware. As AAA budgets go up to maintain pace with SotA, it makes less sense to trash-and-start-from-scratch (traditional practice).

DLC on online games is the ultimate realization of this. Why sink the cost of rebuilding a game, when you have a battle-tested core, with bugs already fixed, and content tooling already created, that you can start from? Essentially: EA {Sport} {Year} model, for everything else.

[munk-a]

> It is nowhere near what you'd expect from a AAA title in terms of quality. Had to stop playing it because it's not worth it to ruin the experience.

Can you clarify a bit whether you were hitting game play bugs or visual issues?

On the PC side there are occasional visual glitches but the game play is relatively stable - I've had trouble with one quest line (the delamain one) and the enemy AI can get stuck sometimes - but it hasn't interrupted game play too badly.

[puranjay]

Rockstar is smart in that it they don't hype up their games at all. You won't even know GTA6 is going to be released until the product is 6 months from finishing.

[munk-a]

I think this is the crux of the issue - Rockstar seems to be pretty heavy handed in keeping their marketing department in check, it's a thing more developers and publishers need to learn. Early and inaccurate marketing is a liability - quantity does not equal quality and marketing departments generally feel like they're judged based on quantity (and often escape issues with over-hyping in favor of shifting blame onto developers).

[MaxBarraclough]

> The problem isn't releasing a broken game. There's a huge challenge in making and releasing games and meeting a specific quality bar.

That's true for any complex product. There are reasonable expectations, and indeed laws, about products being fit for purpose. I don't see why video games are unique.

It's possible to patch them after release. This partially explains, but does not excuse, the pattern of games releasing in a broken state.

[Pfhreak]

I'm not suggesting it's unique, but I am suggesting that expecting them all to be delivered fast, high quality, and reasonably priced is a very tall order.