In a video released by CD Projekt Red today, co-founder of Polish game developer Marcin Iwiński made a public apology for the lackluster performance on PS4 and Xbox One on Cyberpunk 2077, as well as explained some of the difficulties that led to the launch of the game .
Opening with reference to Projekt Red’s policy of being honest with its customers, Iwiński says he and the entire leadership team are “deeply sorry” that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game did not meet the quality standard [CDPR] wanted you to know “.
In addition, he begs viewers not to blame the development teams for what happened, but instead, it indicates that the blame must be borne by Iwiński himself and the council, whose final decision was to launch the game in its current state.
Dear players, Below, you will find the personal explanation of the co-founder of CD PROJEKT about the days leading up to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, sharing the studio’s perspective on what happened with the game on old generation consoles. pic.twitter.com/XjdCKizewqJanuary 13, 2021
Iwiński continues to mention some of the technical and hardware hurdles the team encountered in later stages of development, citing in particular their misguided approach of “wanting to make the game look epic on PCs and then adjusting it to consoles – especially the old-fashioned “and underestimating the hardware gap.
The co-founder then moves on to the company’s future plans and a commitment to remedy the problem – “our ultimate goal is to fix the bugs and crashes that players are experiencing on all platforms, expect major and minor patches regularly.”
To that end, Iwiński presents a roadmap for next year showing CDPR’s plans to release patches 1.1 and 1.2 in the coming weeks before embarking on a series of updates, improvements, free DLC content and a free next-generation console update on Monday half of 2021.
This means that the free DLC that seemed to drop earlier this year may be delayed a little more to prioritize patches for fixing more critical games.
For more details on the progress made in the development of Cyberpunk 2077, including information on updates and improvements, free DLCs and more, visit https://t.co/vfY3xxCM1G pic.twitter.com/6U28q8pcVHJanuary 13, 2021
Balancing delays with expectations
Thanks in large part to widespread acclaim and the success of CDPR’s previous AAA title, The Witcher 3, there was a great deal of hype surrounding the release of Cyberpunk 2077, which was first announced to the world in May 2012 with the arrival of a teaser trailer January 2013.
This community expectation, coupled with the studio’s great view of the scope of the game and its open nature, put a lot of pressure on development, and the team worked overtime at the end of the cycle, as the game suffered several delays.
With the game in progress for so long and several launch windows being postponed, the development company had to balance the loss of community support it would receive for further delaying the title’s launch (especially considering the timing of next console releases) generation) and polish the game to an acceptable standard.
Now, considering the full refund offer for certain versions of the game and the mixed reception from critics, it may have been worth it for CDPR to delay the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 even further, until sometime in 2021.