I really don’t think so. There would have been a backlash, yes, but no worse than what we’re seeing now. Especially if they only delayed the console versions. (And their stock probably wouldn't have tanked as much, either.)

It looks like a game that was over-scoped in the first place, and then experienced lots of feature creep and design shuffling over the course of development, before experiencing a sudden downshift late in the game. You're right that more time in the oven probably wouldn't have helped (besides the technical stuff).…

It’s a very 2020 game in many ways lol

If anyone’s read Death’s End, this is like when the universe was ending because too many people were stealing matter to create pocket universes... Except there are just too many dildos

Ash’s twitter is a delight and has a decent amount of YYH

“Ignored the signals”

Many games have voice chat built into the game rather than through the Switch Online app (Overwatch, Paladins, Fortnite). Just plug a headset into the headphone jack and you’re good.

I mean... Aren’t people using a headset on most platforms? Granted, we don’t know if it has voice chat built in, but many Switch games do nowadays.

You should read Jason Schreier’s book, Blood Sweat and Pixels. Each chapter goes over the development of a different major game, and a common theme in AAA productions with is how “front line” developers (whether they’re QA or programmers or 3D artists or what have you) struggle so much when the leads and executives…

They should definitely try! Like, the statement on Twitter was pretty good apart from the refund stuff.

Really? That’s still 3.2 million sales at launch during a global recession, and right before the holidays for most of the US and Europe. (I imagine many people will be getting it for Christmas rather than right at launch.) That’s pretty great numbers for any AAA game, let alone a single player RPG.

Except the game was supposed to be out in March 2020, well before either console would launch, and neither next-gen console had been fully announced at the time of the interview. (MS had said that “Project Scarlett” was in development, but that was it.) Any comment they made was 100% about PS4 and XB0.

I disagree. They knew full well how that statement would be interpreted by most people. Further, it makes no sense to suggest to all of your global consumers to get a refund when a large percentage won’t be able to get a refund without some kind of special dispensation. Their tone suggested a solution where there…

Either they hadn’t played the console version at all, were absurdly naive, or were flat out lying.

What astounds me is that 40% of their sales were on console! And you know the majority of those people don’t have a PS5 or Series X, which means a huge percentage of players are dealing with this shitty product.

It’s a clear example of a game that was over-scoped early on and probably experienced tons of feature creep until one or two years before launch. They were probably doing QA all the way through, but when the game is constantly changing you can only do so much.

It was 100% disingenous. If you apologize for fucking up and then say that people can ask for a refund, the implicit suggestion is that because you fucked up, people can expect a refund, that exceptions are being made. The fact that the statement had to be clarified in an investor call shows that they could have specif…

CDPR just makes one disingenuous statement after another

This was beautiful, thank you so much for writing it.

Not sure, I haven’t read anything specific about them.