What failure? Cyberpunk 2077 helped CD Projekt break its revenue and profit records

midian182

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What just happened? Cyberpunk 2077 might be considered a failure in many consumers’ eyes, but it still helped CD Projekt to the company’s best-ever financial results. Sales revenue was more than double that of 2015, the same year The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched.

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, CD Projekt’s preliminary numbers for 2020 included $563 million in sales revenue, four times more than the previous year. That’s an all-time high figure for the polish company, more than two-and-a-half times the previous record: $210 million in 2015, most of which came from the launch of the third Witcher game.

It was also a record year for net profits. The $303 million was triple the previous record of $89.8 million—also set in 2015. The company's final results for 2020 are expected to be announced on April 22.

The incredible hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt’s biggest launch since The Witcher 3, saw it secure 8 million pre-orders. It also became the fastest-selling PC game of all time.

With plans for the ambitious, GTA V Online-like multiplayer element being “reconsidered” and CD Projekt Red restructuring to develop multiple AAA games simultaneously, it was starting to look as if Cyberpunk 2077 would be quietly abandoned by its developer, but joint CEO Adam Kiciński recently confirmed this is far from the case.

“I don’t see an option to shelve Cyberpunk 2077. We are convinced that we can bring the game to such a state that we can be proud of it and therefore successfully sell it for years to come,” he said.

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CDPR done their job very nicely. Create the most hype for the most hyped game in history. And all the suckers pre-ordered (the word that makes me sick every time I hear it.)

Now , CDPR will say "What me worry? Suckers already bought our hype!"
 
And this is why pre-orders are overrated, and shouldn't be taken seriously anymore.

The industry's new perspective of, "launch first, patch later" doesn't entertain the thought of actual quality.

But hey, keep pre-ordering games that are pre-rendered to look great, that show nothing at all how launch will be.
 
It was poorly optimized and obviously lacked features. You could also see where they had to cut story elements. Despite all that, I still dumped 200 very enjoyable hours into it.

Here's to hoping that with DLC it becomes the game they wanted to make and we wanted to play
 
To be fair, while I acknowledge that others may not have had as good of an experience as I did playing this game, I absolutely got my money's worth out of this game as expected and it ran brilliantly for me, both play through runs. I've even started a third play through and kept it low level to await incoming DLC to see how it changes the play.

I admittedly got more mileage out of Fallout 4 overall as I lost count of the number of play through times on that one due to the rich modding community there. 2500 total hours into a single player game was the most value I got out of 40 bucks in my gaming history. Cyberpunk 2077 is only at it's beginning so I expect to play through it another 5 or 6 times before I get tired of it eventually with tons of mods added and playing through DLC additions.

I'm at 250 hours of game play, so far, about 1/10th that of FO4, but then, FO4 evolved amazingly over it's lifetime thanks to it's community of modders. I see more of the same for CP2077 as highly likely. Some good mods are already out for CP2077 that changes the flavor of the game immensely. Exactly as it should be.

Edit: The point of this mod is purely cosmetic... The Type 66 Avenger in purple as a one of your owned cars is sleeker in my eyes than the silver version.

TR96iq9.jpg
 
CDPR done their job very nicely. Create the most hype for the most hyped game in history.

1. All developers and publishers create hype for their games, in fact they employee people who do nothing but that.
2. It was the fan base who posted countless forum thread across all gaming sites about how the game was really the "Witcher IV" just in a fictional future world...even if the game had its own universe.
3. Chasing page views; web sites kept posting article after article about the game even though few any useful information about the game itself.
 
Note my FPS in upper left corner. That is on Ultra Ray Tracing and Quality DLSS mode at 1440p on a Gsync monitor. Slick.

Edit :Obviously busy areas are not 80 fps :p But I never see less than 58-59 at very worst, and average around 65-72 in most areas. Very smooth gameplay with all eye candy engaged.
 
I have to say the harshest place for frame rate in the game does occur quite frequently as it's right outside of V's apartment building, standing at the top of the steps and looking out into the little square area midday when it's fully crowded, and traffic filling the area.

While for the most part it sits around 61 fps there, I see dips down to 58 from time to time at that spot. Nowhere else in the game hits FPS as hard as that one spot is capable of, but not always dishing out.

Edit: Reference point, this spot was much worse on my i7 7700K + RTX 3090 than it is on my Ryzen 7 5800X + RTX 3090, the CPU upgrade alone accounted for a solid 5-7 FPS improvement at this spot which before was tanking as low as 53 or so FPS here, and sitting around 57-59 average. Not a huge improvement, but enough to be worthwhile, just over the line mostly.

Edit 2: Darnit... this much talk has tempted me, I was trying NOT to play the game while waiting for DLC and keeping my well setup character ready for the new challenges, but now I'm just looking for excuses to hunt down crime scenes and prosecute them. The CPU upgrade really made a comfort level improvement overall to the game.
 
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Yep: This is why I truly do not believe they'll ever "fix" it fully. They'll get rid of bugs, do a half decent but likely mediocre DLC and move on.

Here's the reality of things: Once you managed to build enough reputation and good faith like CDPR did with Witcher 3, it's more profitable to just deliver everything after that in lesser and lesser iterations: every time a little shorter game, a little simpler, bit worst, a bit more underwhelming in what it delivered vs what it promised, etc.

As long as you are saving a lot of money and dev time, the reputation can get you a long way into just hyping things up. Hell just look at guys like Chris Roberts or Peter Molyneux: they can still churn out a profit and barely deliver anything at all, waaaaay below their promised grand vision, just based on the reputation they built what, 30 years ago? It's still being milked successfully without any recent games to back up that massive hype attached to just their names on a project.
 
Yeah, pre-orders were 8mil, but the fact that they are now at 13mil+ copies sold (after refunds) it's even more impressive (from a hype-marketing-sale POV).

Yep: This is why I truly do not believe they'll ever "fix" it fully. They'll get rid of bugs, do a half decent but likely mediocre DLC and move on.

Here's the reality of things: Once you managed to build enough reputation and good faith like CDPR did with Witcher 3, it's more profitable to just deliver everything after that in lesser and lesser iterations: every time a little shorter game, a little simpler, bit worst, a bit more underwhelming in what it delivered vs what it promised, etc.

As long as you are saving a lot of money and dev time, the reputation can get you a long way into just hyping things up. Hell just look at guys like Chris Roberts or Peter Molyneux: they can still churn out a profit and barely deliver anything at all, waaaaay below their promised grand vision, just based on the reputation they built what, 30 years ago? It's still being milked successfully without any recent games to back up that massive hype attached to just their names on a project.
I don't think they call pull this hype-sale strategy again soon.

If they do a superficial rush-job at fixing CP 77 the next game won't get this kind of hype ever again. The only way they can rise to the pre CP 77 level of trust is to undo all the wrongdoings and then win some more good graces...

So I disagree that they will do what you say above. I think they want to get to the pre CP 77 trust again and they will work for it. But it remains to be seen...
 
Edit 2: Darnit... this much talk has tempted me, I was trying NOT to play the game while waiting for DLC and keeping my well setup character ready for the new challenges, but now I'm just looking for excuses to hunt down crime scenes and prosecute them. The CPU upgrade really made a comfort level improvement overall to the game.

Just duplicate the save file and put the copy somewhere else
 
The total sales are a lot less impressive when you consider how hard it is/was to get a refund for the game on console. If console players could have refunded after 2 hours like steam can I think the total sales would have been a lot lower.

As it stands, all the console pre orders 48 hours before launch were guaranteed no take backsies sales. Many players had moved on by the time the refunds were allowed, totally strategic plan I'm sure.

Also just because a game is a failure of a product doesnt mean it is unprofitable, see also every broken unimaginative AAA sandbox action adventure looter shooter RPG....thing in the last 5 years, or call of duty. And a good game isnt guaranteed to sell well either, see games like the original thirteen.
 
They could have kept smashing record if they released a finished game instead of a rushed game. Their record is tarnished. Pretty sure many people won't be as likely to pre-order their next game. People should not pre order in any case. *****s.
 
If you look at what Hello Games did with NMS, they succeeded in turning around a very similar over-hyped game. Every new free feature they added got the game back in the charts and a new batch of sales. This is what I think CDPR should aim for with C2077.
Like many here I played the game and quite enjoyed it - its a bit 'thin' at times and the RPG is very lightweight but hopefully in time they can flesh out those elements more. I guess we will find out.
 
A bit worrisome that a lots of players are like: "I am perfectly fine getting scammed" because everyone who played Cyberpunk was straight up scammed.

They cut tons of features and everyone is like: "But I didn't have that many bugs". It's actually funny how CDPR and a lots of players are totally ignoring the fact that they released even worse game than Ubisoft in terms of engine/features but tbh. even latest Ubisoft games have much more features than Cyberpunk.

Luckily at least CDPR can not use their cringe reddit karma farm quote: "When it's ready" cuz everyone will just laugh ;)
 
Well, there‘s short term gains / profit vs long term. The question is if the short term profits were worth it vs the long term damage to the brand.

Didn‘t HP do something similar many years ago ? Cut R&D and support to get great profits for a little while, but it came back to bite them in their behind ?
 
A bit worrisome that a lots of players are like: "I am perfectly fine getting scammed" because everyone who played Cyberpunk was straight up scammed.

They cut tons of features and everyone is like: "But I didn't have that many bugs". It's actually funny how CDPR and a lots of players are totally ignoring the fact that they released even worse game than Ubisoft in terms of engine/features but tbh. even latest Ubisoft games have much more features than Cyberpunk.

Luckily at least CDPR can not use their cringe reddit karma farm quote: "When it's ready" cuz everyone will just laugh ;)
You talk like you know anything at all. Clearly you don't. When we say we played the game through and got our monies worth, who do you think you are to declare we got scammed when we're happy with a 250 hour game having given us our monies worth? I notice you twisting words just to make yourself feel good... nobody says "I am perfectly fine getting scammed" and for you to DARE twist our words that way shows your true intent here.

Do you even realize how you sound? Arrogant and ignorant, that is how you sound. The game kicked butt, I finished it TWICE and am working a third run through.

CLEARLY you don't know what you're talking about here. Aesop's Fables called that Sour Grapes. Too bad they are out of YOUR reach, because they ain't sour, they are some tasty grapes! You are talking smack about grapes you will never be able to reach.
 
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You talk like you know anything at all. Clearly you don't. When we say we played the game through and got our monies worth, who do you think you are to declare we got scammed when we're happy with a 250 hour game having given us our monies worth? I notice you twisting words just to make yourself feel good... nobody says "I am perfectly fine getting scammed" and for you to DARE twist our words that way shows your true intent here.

Do you even realize how you sound? Arrogant and ignorant, that is how you sound. The game kicked butt, I finished it TWICE and am working a third run through.

CLEARLY you don't know what you're talking about here. Aesop's Fables called that Sour Grapes. Too bad they are out of YOUR reach, because they ain't sour, they are some tasty grapes! You are talking smack about grapes you will never be able to reach.

He probably bought on ps4 lol
 
He probably bought on ps4 lol
ROFLMAO! Well said...

Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a Ryzen 5800X + RTX 3090 is a buttery smooth experience, but then haters like him will never find out, they go by what they're told, not what they experience themselves. Sadly, this is the case of too many today, rumor and silly conspiracy theory guides their entire world.
 
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