General Gaming Cyperpunk's delisting is a warning for cross-gen

[crispy4000]

I think this merits its own thread, for the implications it has for the rest of the industry.

What's crazy, to me, is that Cyperpunk doesn't appear to run that much worse than some of the base console SKUs we've already seen.  Avengers on One S looks just as smeary and riddled with reconstruction artifacts, like a Switch game you'd really need to play handheld.  Big budget games have also shipped buggy and half-baked recently, like Fallout 76.  Neither got delisted.  So what's the standard here?  Was it the combination of both?  Or just the blowback from RDR2-level hype going in?

It all leaves me super curious about how long cross-gen can truly last.  I don't see Cyperpunk on PC as some extremely forward thinking next-gen game on the whole.  It does do a lot with raytracing, sure, but that was always going to be cut or paired back on consoles.  The bigger issue is that they entirely overshot the base machines, when they had all these years knowing where it needed to run somewhat acceptably, at the very least.  I have my doubts that they'll ever get there.

Cyperpunk's PS Store delisting can't be blamed on the next-gen consoles' SSDs, CPUs, etc, either.  So I shudder to think what REVillage will look like on older consoles.  There's now an onus on publishers to prove that their last-gen versions won't end up in the same place.  What's Halo Infinite going to look like on One S?  Horizon 2 on PS4?  Gamers will want to know sooner rather than later.  It leads to a question of what is acceptable performance for these platforms (even Series S!) post PS5/XSX launch period.  Every developer will have a different answer for that, and we can't expect the platform holders to enforce standards.

Perhaps this is just the reality of shipping on so many different SKUs at the same time during COVID.  But if the industry is truly settled on a lengthy cross-gen period, I think we're due for plenty more fuck ups with how Sony and Microsoft have complicated things.

 

And then we'll question again what deserves getting pulled, because that's a thing now.

[SimpleG]

9 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

What's crazy, to me, is that Cyperpunk doesn't appear to run that much worse than some of the base console SKUs we've already seen.  Avengers on One S looks just as smeary and riddled with reconstruction artifacts, like a Switch game you'd really need to play handheld.  Big budget games have also shipped buggy and half-baked recently, like Fallout 76.  Neither got delisted.  So what's the standard here?  Was it the combination of both?

The game wasnt pulled because it ran like shit,CDPR put console maker in the cross hairs for upset owners. They got thrown to the wolves and in turn pulled it .

[SimpleG]

Everything after that was just companies taking turns for good PR

[skillzdadirecta]

4 hours ago, SimpleG said:

The game wasnt pulled because it ran like shit,CDPR put console maker in the cross hairs for upset owners. They got thrown to the wolves and in turn pulled it .

Exactly. It's really this simple.

[XxEvil AshxX]

Those other games were buggy but still playable. Fallout 76 had fixable problems.

 

Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna be a shitshow no matter what. They made a game on a PC that just can't run on current gen consoles. Their end product will probably be so compromised i can see them canceling it completely.

[BloodyHell]

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Those other games were buggy but still playable. Fallout 76 had fixable problems.

 

Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna be a shitshow no matter what. They made a game on a PC that just can't run on current gen consoles. Their end product will probably be so compromised i can see them canceling it completely.

Hard to cancel something that has millions of copies already in the wild, both digital and physical. 

[jaethos]

The delisting is a result of Sony's return policy. They don't allow refunds on games that have been played unless the game is defective. If they are going to allow people to get a refund of a game they have played, they have to stop selling it and classify it as defective. Microsoft has a more lenient return policy, so they don't have to take it off the store in order to give refunds.

[johnny]

sony probably wouldn’t have done this if CDPR didn’t say they would refund everybody’s game 

[gamer.tv]

The question is, can you get a refund of the physical copy and then just keep it? 

[Duderino]

Delisting is just the latest blow to what was already a nightmare scenario for CD Project Red.  The entire situation should be warning to devs/publishers that poor last gen ports can lead to considerable consumer backlash.
 

The oneS and PS4’s lacking horsepower is clearly a contributing factor to a rise in game breaking bugs. It’s not just that the game looks awful and runs poorly on these systems.

[SimpleG]

1 hour ago, gamer.tv said:

The question is, can you get a refund of the physical copy and then just keep it? 

Why would you be able to ?

[Keyser_Soze]

2 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Why would you be able to ?

 

Return an empty case and hope no one notices.

[JPDunks4]

I don't necessarily think it's the fact he game is running so poorly on the last gen consoles that is the big issue at hand here.

 

The issue is the lack of transparency.  They purposefully didn't show any footage of the game and made statements like, it's running great.

 

If they showed the game and how it was performing, and were like, we will keep working on it, you'll get the next gen update for Free, this is how it runs on the One X/Pro, and in back compat modes on PS5/XSX at least a few weeks before release to allow people to cancel or wait with more information, I think this entire blowback would be completely different. 

Transparency, most of the time, prevents a lot of the outrage.  

[SaysWho?]

Delisting and stuff being pulled from stores is a warning for digital in general. It's like when Amazing Spider-Man 2 was pulled. Some of the reactions were, "And nothing of value was lost," but the point is that because of copyright involving songs in games or the IP itself, these kind of games can be pulled and unable to buy, whether it's that or Scott Pilgrim. And one without a physical release becomes impossible to play. 

[gamer.tv]

27 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Why would you be able to ?

The cost of the return of the disc being less than the cost of transit? Although we will be keeping ours (for the eventual update, the option to upgrade to a PS5 version later on and the fact it was gifted by @Commissar SFLUFANand is an extra special copy because of that).

[Keyser_Soze]

37 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 And one without a physical release becomes impossible to play. 

 

Cyberpunk is already impossible to play, that's why Sony delisted it.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, JPDunks4 said:

I don't necessarily think it's the fact he game is running so poorly on the last gen consoles that is the big issue at hand here.

 

The issue is the lack of transparency.  They purposefully didn't show any footage of the game and made statements like, it's running great.

 

If they showed the game and how it was performing, and were like, we will keep working on it, you'll get the next gen update for Free, this is how it runs on the One X/Pro, and in back compat modes on PS5/XSX at least a few weeks before release to allow people to cancel or wait with more information, I think this entire blowback would be completely different. 

Transparency, most of the time, prevents a lot of the outrage.  

This too... CDPR were being deliberately deceptive it seems and it bit them in the ass. Game runs fine on the next gen consoles even in backwards compat mode, but most gamers don't have next gen consoles and those are the ones who got fucked especially since this game was ALWAYS supposed to be a last gen game. I don't know what happened at CDPR but they deserve ALL of the smoke their getting. This has very little to do with cross-gen being a problem and more to do with a dveloper trying to pull some shady shit. 

[DarkStar189]

According to Wikipedia:

"Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in May 2012. Trailers for the game were released in January 2013, at E3 2018, and at E3 2019. The game was initially confirmed for Microsoft Windows, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One announced at E3 2018. Stadia was announced in August 2019."

 

So in my head I'm thinking they probably started out as a pc only game. Due to the success of The Witcher 3 smack dab in the middle of this time period(2012-2020) they got an influx of investors and money. Got talked into expanding into releasing on consoles as well. By the end, they ran out of time and all versions suffered. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Witcher 2 and 3 both came out on console.  I can't imagine CP 2077 wasn't always intended as a console game as well.

 

I have no doubt that PC was the lead platform, but I just don't see CDPR as leaders in tech.  When Witcher 3 launched -- it also was REALLY buggy -- in fact Witcher 3 STILL is buggy -- and  the AI for monsters is super simplistic, and the AI for Roach is terrible. 

 

They got in over their head, and released the game several months before it was ready to come out.  What they probably needed to do was be significantly more aggressive in their optimization on PS4/XB1 -- which would lead to a much more "sparse" world.  But hey -- that's what happens on cross-gen games.