CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

So, what sales-related project management questions for the CD Projekt Management Board does this answer for the HN crowd?

Are people upset that this AAA game that is trying do everything on all devices for a huge audience doesn't perform well on the last-gen consoles on it's initial rollout?

The major underappreciated factor for this release is the impact of COVID lockdowns - particularly enforced WFH - on the final development of this title.

For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight.

Still, I think CDPR were right to release the game. Its good enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-gen consoles.

Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public bugs.

Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants, workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).

Last-gen consoles? If it wasn't for the most recent delay of release date, Cyberpunk 2077 would've been released before PS5 and the new Xbox were even available for purchase. You're acting like people are trying to play this game on an NES.

If the game ain't gonna work on a certain console, don't sell it for that console. Plain and simple. Or if you're going to release it anyway, at least let gaming critics review it and let the public make an informed decision, which CDPR deliberately didn't do.

I'm baffled as to why so many people are defending this incredibly shady business practice by CDPR.

> Hi, this is Michał Nowakowski – the second question; would having more developers help deliver the game on old-gens? In terms of delivering the game at a certain point, it’s really not about the number of people; it’s not like throwing in – in the last month – 200 or so people would actually help. So, the answer is no; this is not related to the fact that we could have thrown 300 or 500 more people into the fray and things would have happened differently.

This is interesting info for someone like me that doesn't work in this field. It's something that I can understand intuitively, but it's nice to see that confirmed.

That’s interesting: a lot of releases seem to sell up to 2-3x more in console than pc, but approx 60% of their sales are for pc. Is that because of Covid, or is it a trend?