1310
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

The launch was terrible, but there are some things that keep them apart from the rest of terrible launches.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.

The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.

Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don't remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.

I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of "release now fix later" games. However, I don't think they really did it on purpose. The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today's terms wasn't even that big. The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.

But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs. They optimized the code, fixed most of the bugs, improved the AI massively and made the game really stable, to the point where I've seen it running at 40 FPS on 10+ year old overheating laptops. Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of "release now fix later" games.

Hardly. That's been a thing for a while now.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I think release then fix became common as soon as internet distribution became practical

Back when everything was on physical media the releases were more polished

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah I agree.

Makes me wonder how many updates did Half-life 2 get? That was the first single player game I remember requiring an online connection.

load more comments (6 replies)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
1310 points (99.0% liked)

Memes

44073 readers
2523 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS