CD Projekt Red Co-Founder Publicly Apologizes for Console Launch, Announces Support Roadmap

[Raevenlord]

As it stands, Cyberpunk 2077 is the game many either love or love to hate. The game launched last December 10th after three delays to a great reception of the PC platform - and a good one on current-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X|S - but was a fiasco on last-gen consoles and their mid-life refreshes to such an extent that Sony removed the game from their digital store. A great deal of digital ink has already been written on CD Projekt Red's handling of the situation, and it could - really could - have been handled better.

Now, CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński has released a 5-minute video where he approaches Cyberpunk 2077's release state; assumes, alongside the direction, full responsibility for the state of the game; and doubles-down on CD Projekt Red's commitment to improve the Cyberpunk 2077 experience. he doesn't go into too much detail as to how and why things went awry, but says that a smattering of management decisions led to today's situation. And considering the current situation, plans for post-launch DLC (akin to those that happened with The Witcher 3, which featured new armor, weapons, haircuts, missions, and a New Game + mode) will be arriving slightly later than predicted, so as to allow the team to fully focus on straightening out the games' rough patches.

The new roadmap details a big new update for the game coming in the next 9 days (the video was released yesterday), which means that it will be available before January 23rd. This update, which will focus mostly on bugs and performance issues, will be followed up by a second big update coming in February, which will be even bigger and more comprehensive than the one coming in January. It seems CD Projekt Red expects these two updates to bring the game close enough to its desired state in that we can look for the aforementioned free DLC releases sometime after this second February update, alongside smaller patches to keep on improving the experience.

As for gamers currently playing the game on current-gen consoles via backwards compatibility, Marcin Iwiński says that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game will be released to the public sometime in the second half of 2021.

I for one have been enjoying the game immensely, even though yes, there are many, many bugs, and I've seen the game crash on me some ten times altogether. This is with some 70 hours put into it, and four endings already unlocked. I am now waiting for these patches - likely just for the first big January patch, depending on the release notes) to jump right back in. I still think that the game is a technical achievement, bugs and all, and is close to my ideal cyberpunk environment. here's hoping CD Projekt Red delivers, and that they can rebuild the hard-earned trust with gamers, the industry, and their investors. It can be argued that the studio had nowhere else to go in public opinion other than down, so in a way, they have become victims of their own success - and most of it at the expense of the studios' own decisions.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[claylomax]

Isn't it a bit late for this?

 

[deu]

Isn't it a bit late for this?

The communication of it is a bit late yeah. I think they have had this plan since launch, so they might as well have put this information out a little earlier.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

All game developers policy is to adhere to the old saying, "its better ask forgiveness than...". You get the point here, its your wallet, vote with it. Eventually, gamers will have to send a message to clueless publishers to stop pushing so damn hard to pump games out when they just arent ready. In reality we know this wont change, given ROI and all that.

 

[nguyen]

As a PC gamer I feel like CP2077 could have far surpassed Witcher 3 had CDPR dedicated all their resources to PC version then port to console later. CDPR tried to please all crowds and end up dissappointing everyone.
I still feel CP2077 on PC is well worth the money, but it could have been much more, especially when there are so much content being cut.

 

[enxo218]

Isn't it a bit late for this?

yes...yes it is cdpr's reputation is very much tarnished

 

[Pumper]

As a PC gamer I feel like CP2077 could have far surpassed Witcher 3 had CDPR dedicated all their resources to PC version then port to console later. CDPR tried to please all crowds and end up dissappointing everyone.
I still feel CP2077 on PC is well worth the money, but it could have been much more, especially when there are so much content being cut.

The game is missing half the promised features and looking at the state of the console versions, it is obvious that it not being PC exclusive is not the reason for all the problems.

 

[Vayra86]

Isn't it a bit late for this?

Maybe the translator had covid? Period seems about right

yes...yes it is cdpr's reputation is very much tarnished

Definitely took a dent yeah!

The best fix for that is delivering the game that offers more than people expected now. Flesh out that city with events, free LC and fix the bugs... usually when a product comes together and is supported by some new PR that tends to fix things quite well in public perception too.

 

[Vya Domus]

It wasn't just about the technical problems, let's be real the game itself is barely above mediocre.

 

[protain]

The game is missing half the promised features and looking at the state of the console versions

That very much reminds me of the No Man's Sky launch debacle, hopefully this is not going to become a new release model...

 

[Vayra86]

It wasn't just about the technical problems, let's be real the itself game is barely above mediocre.

Typo I know but the game is 100% perfectly an 'itself' or 'myself' game. Its all about a personal journey and life choices

I disagree though. This game's narrative is miles ahead of many others, and at its core the gameplay and immersion is there. You can only have missed that if you skipped past all the dialogue. That stuff is easily on the level of a decent movie.

 

[protain]

This game's narrative is miles ahead of many others, and at its core the gameplay and immersion is there. You can only have missed that if you skipped past all the dialogue.

That's the part of the game I am most looking forward to... like almost every game I play I want an engaging experience, story, and characters as I'm not fussed about PVP or battle royale modes

Now to get a GPU that can do it justice on my ultrawide... so looking at playing it in late 2021 (hopefully)

 

[Turmania]

After delaying the release for 3 times, I expected them to iron out issues, apparanetly they were half a year further from release still. it is just bad, very bad management. Game is groundbreaking but no one will remember that.

 

[Ravenas]

As a PC user, I have ran into bugs. They haven't ruined the game by any means. With exception of Xbox One and PS4, this is overblown in my opinion. Similar to Skyrim release or Fallout 76.

 

[BSim500]

Yeah, it's not just the bugs. Stuff like NPC's / cars disappearing when you turn your back seems to be literally part of the core game code to be designed to only create / populate what's immediately in front of you. Short of rewriting major chunks of that I can't see that being "fixed" at all.

 

[Raevenlord]

Yeah, it's not just the bugs. Stuff like NPC's / cars disappearing when you turn your back seems to be literally part of the core game code to be designed to only create / populate what's immediately in front of you. Short of rewriting major chunks of that I can't see that being "fixed" at all.

I'd say that after they've done their performance optimizations, that's actually easy to turn around, simply by increasing the delta between objects exiting your FOV and them being culled. As it is, it seems that that decision was done to reduce performance issues as much as possible with a "brute force" approach.

 

[henok.gk]

A bit late but nevertheless appreciated they came up front and apologized for fucking up this bad. CDPR isn't an evil company at it's core (look at their no DRM policy and where GOG Galaxy is right now despite people saying it'll never make it where it's at today) but that doesn't mean shit like this never happens. I do hope they keep their word this time as they only have so many chances to abuse people's trust and apologize to get away with it.

 

[spectatorx]

Truth is for long time of development cdpr have been saying they will release the game probably only on next-gen consoles because ps4 and xbox one are too weak. I'm sure they released cyberpunk on xbox one and ps4 only to satisfy investors with numbers.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I donno man. This game story line is fracking boring and dull. Some of the actions you need to do are just simple put, boring and flat as hell. I was looking for at least a good story experience but I got bored after a couple of hours.
This is so much different compared to the first DeusEx, for example, where story was everything. Gameplay also.

 

[nguyen]

The game is missing half the promised features and looking at the state of the console versions, it is obvious that it not being PC exclusive is not the reason for all the problems.

Well if all the beta testing had been done solely on the PC version, the experience would have been much more polished.
I have already gotten 100h+ outta the game and that is way above the norm for a single player game, extra content is nice but it would be too greedy for us gamers to demand CDPR for more.

 

[tfdsaf]

If they are able to fix all of the bugs and crashes till mid February and then give us a big feature and content patch in March, I'd be happy and start regaining trust in CDPR. That said the features and content patch has to be big, I'm talking significantly improving stealth, significantly improving NPC AI, this means pedestrians, quest characters, cops, enemies, etc... improving the crafting UI significantly and making it more seamless to use, add using enemies as a human shield, add some sort of mini game like Gwent was in the Witcher 3, and add longer length 2-3 new missions that span for 3-4 hours.

With that type of content and all of the bugs fixed I'd probably forgive CDPR for the state in which they released cyberpunk 2077, and to think that if they only delayed the game for 3 more months they could have had a much smoother and better received launch!

 

[ZoneDymo]

imo evne if they fix all the bugs and glitches and improve the performance, the game is still a hollow shell of what it was meant to be, it needs SO much more work that im pretty much 99.9% convinced off will never actually make it to the game.

Typo I know but the game is 100% perfectly an 'itself' or 'myself' game. Its all about a personal journey and life choices

I disagree though. This game's narrative is miles ahead of many others, and at its core the gameplay and immersion is there. You can only have missed that if you skipped past all the dialogue. That stuff is easily on the level of a decent movie.

so its "Miles ahead of many others" but its on the level of a "Decent movie" ?
do you in general really feel movies have better stories then games?

and also was it not known that like 95% of the "Choices" in game literally do not do anything? that you can even level to get more dialogue options that have zero impact at all?

 

[dyonoctis]

imo evne if they fix all the bugs and glitches and improve the performance, the game is still a hollow shell of what it was meant to be, it needs SO much more work that im pretty much 99.9% convinced off will never actually make it to the game.



so its "Miles ahead of many others" but its on the level of a "Decent movie" ?
do you in general really feel movies have better stories then games?

and also was it not known that like 95% of the "Choices" in game literally do not do anything? that you can even level to get more dialogue options that have zero impact at all?

At the moment if you were to make a list of games with compelling stories against a list of movies with the same criteria, movies would probably win by a wide margin since it's been a "noble" medium for a far longer time.
Games are an odd story telling medium, since the medium itself can work without a story at all, and just get by with pure gameplay. But because they are interactive you can't just write a story for them in the same way that you would write a movie. You need to find that delicate balance between building a world, the characters, the themes while giving the player stuff to do because it's a video game, not a movie

As whole the collective experience on game writing seems lower. indies games are often the closest thing that we got to "auteur movies" while AAA got a few gems, we often get the "blockbuster scenario that works, can be entertaining, but won't blow your socks off". If you want to become a film writer there's tons and tons of academic ressource about it, lots of references movies to learn from, by comparison video game writing is still in it's infancy.

 

[evernessince]

That very much reminds me of the No Man's Sky launch debacle, hopefully this is not going to become a new release model...

CDProject red has made no indication that they are going to make a no man's sky like comeback. In fact they went out of their way to strike down rumors that they were.

As far as I see it this is a promise to fix the bugs yet we are still left with a game that is missing many promised features. I've walked into what appears to be cut gang wars content, where the two rival gangs will literally stare at each other. I've see this twice now.

This game with bug fixes still makes for an empty open world game with absolutely atrocious AI and grindy linear side-quests.

 

[dyonoctis]

CDProject red has made no indication that they are going to make a no man's sky like comeback. In fact they went out of their way to strike down rumors that they were.

As far as I see it this is a promise to fix the bugs yet we are still left with a game that is missing many promised features. I've walked into what appears to be cut gang wars content, where the two rival gangs will literally stare at each other. I've see this twice now.

This game with bug fixes still makes for an empty open world game with absolutely atrocious AI and grindy linear side-quests.

I know that gang wars actually happen in Pacifica, I'm often seeing Animals and Scavenger fighting each other to death, but it's not supposed to happen in the other district iirc, (since the police is supposed to be active there according to the lore)