Long post ahead:
Seeing the disaster of a launch for console, I decided to take a look around the company CD Projekt to see if there's any information available that can shed some light as to what happened internally to cause this. I thought this would be pretty easy since the EU has a lot of transparency laws. And it was. On their
main page, there's a link to the
"Transcript of the conference call with the Management Board - 14/12/2020". There's a MP3 version if you prefer to listen. This conference call was with investors I assume, but I don't know. There's a lot of interesting information that I don't think I've seen elsewhere. I'll leave some excerpts below:
After 3 delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on releasing the game. We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy. On top of that, during the campaign, we showed the game mostly on PCs.
So the management board focused on releasing the game and ignored the developers about the issues that plagued the last-gen consoles. They admit that they mostly showed gameplay on the PC and not on the consoles. Clearly, to some degree, they were aware of the problems on last-gen consoles prior to release and attempted to cover it.
The next set of fixes will be released within the next seven days. Big updates are planned for January and February, together with smaller fixes.
This corroborates the Vice article I had posted as the 21st would be exactly 7 days after the conference call.
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.
Someone asked if there would not have been any problems had there been more developers. Michał Nowakowski answered saying that the number of developers would not have been able to fix the issues in time. I'm not entirely sure what this entails. Could it mean that the issues they had were so great than no number of people could have been able to fix it? Or was there something else, logistically or management-wise, slowing down the process of fixing the game?
We have an internal QA department and we’re working with external companies as well. One thing that perhaps didn’t help us is COVID: internal testers are able to test the game working from home because we provide them with our own connected machines and so on, but external testers working for external companies were not able to test the game from homes – they have test centers and if they’re not there, they’re not able to work. So, we have seen a decrease in the number of testers, but I wouldn’t point to it as a major source of problems.
They admit that the number of QA testers was lower than if there were no COVID restrictions, however, they claim that that was not a major source of problems. If lack of QA testing was not the problem, then that would mean they were aware of problems as more QA testing would just reveal more problems. This is even more concerning. They claim more developers would not have helped. They claim more testing would not have helped.
...about multiplayer – first and foremost, we haven’t confirmed any dates yet, and as I’ve said before, it’s hard to judge now. We’re in an unanticipated situation and we’ll have to reassess. This is planned for January. We’re now focusing on managing the single-player release, working on patches, communication and – as I said at the very beginning of this call – our focus remains on gamers.
Multiplayer was planned for January but they are now focusing on fixing the single-player.
First – your question was about the focus and the cause of ours ignoring, so to speak, the shortcomings of the current-gen version. It is more about us looking – as was previously stated – at the PC and next-gen performance rather than current-gen. We definitely did not spend enough time looking at that. I wouldn’t say that we felt any external or internal pressure to launch on the date – other than the normal pressure, which is typical for any release. So that was not the cause.
Now, this statement is even more interesting, and highly concerning. They admit that they had ignored the problems the old-gen consoles were facing, but they had no external or internal pressure to launch on the final release date. If they have no "external or internal pressure", then why did they not delay it once more so that the console version would be in a playable state? I do not believe this statement is true. Considering the outrage displayed by people after the final delay, they definitely had extreme pressure to stick to the release date.
In terms of the certification process and the third parties – this is definitely on our side. I can only assume that they trusted that we’re going to fix things upon release, and that obviously did not come together exactly as we had planned.
Here, they assume that Sony and Microsoft trusted that they were going to have the game fixed by the time it was released. I suppose a small degree of fault could be placed on Sony and Microsoft for not making sure the release version of the game was not completely broken. They should be incentivized to do so any way as any poor released game, especially as one that's hyped up as this one, would bring negative press to them.
Come January and February you’re going to see larger improvements – which we’ve stated already. We have also stated that if your expectation is that the game is going to be equal to, say, nextgens or PC in terms of performance, that definitely isn’t going to happen. Having said that, I’m not saying it’s going to be a bad game – but if you’re expectations regarding, say, visuals or other performance angle, are like this, then we’re openly stating that’s not going to be the case. It will be a good, playable, stable game, without glitches and crashes, though. That’s the intention.
For last-gen consoles, they are only aiming a "good, playable, stable game, without glitches and crashes". Any expectation for the game to perform like PC is out of the question.
...with regard to not showing the console version – we’ve actually shown console footage, but never on the last-gen consoles. The reason is that we were updating the game on last-gen consoles until the very last minute, and we thought we’d make it in time. Unfortunately this resulted in giving it to reviewers just one day before the release, which was definitely too late and the media didn’t get the chance to review it properly. That was not intended; we were just fixing the game until the very last moment.
The reason they claim that no last-gen console footage was shown was because they were still working on it until the very moment it was released. Therefore, no reviewers were able to play it. I think this clearly shows that this game was not ready to be released and needed to be delayed once more. However, for whatever reason, they were adamant to release.
Spokko and the GWENT team are working on their projects. The Cyberpunk teams were scheduled to continue working on patches – this will probably take some more time, but of course we are branching and working on future projects as well. We’re also scheduling holidays; people are tired and – regardless of the situation and regardless of patches, we will not simply continue working as before; our people need to rest a bit. We will have a strong team working on patches at least until February.
After some well deserved holiday rest for the developers, they will be moving onto other projects and working on patches up until February. I guess we should expect a well polished last-gen version by then. Perhaps they did not want to delay again, because they already have an estimate that the game would only be ready in February? Therefore, the delay would be too long and would only cause more negativity towards the game? Also, clearly, the crunch that they forced on their developers clearly did not pay off. Crunch is never the solution.
Hello, I have a question on your cost side. You said that the pre-orders covered the development and marketing costs of the game. ...given the work which is required now to fix bugs, glitches and similar problems, how does this affect your costs with regard to marketing and development?
Unfortunately I cannot share the cost related to additional work, but the cost of patching the game is irrelevant compared to what we have already spent
Interesting that they had basically completely recouped the cost of development and marketing (over 7 years!) just from pre-orders alone! The cost of fixing the game is small in comparison to how much they have already spent.
One has to understand: Microsoft and Sony have refund policies for every product that is released digitally on their storefronts. Despite several articles I’ve seen that things are being set up just for us, it’s actually not true – these policies are in place and have always been in place; they’re not offered specifically for us. Anyone who has purchased any title on the PlayStation network or the Microsoft storefront can ask for a refund, and if it’s made within certain boundaries, usually related to time, usage and so on, can ask for that refund. Our procedure here with Microsoft and Sony is not different than with any other title released on any of those storefronts. I want to state that clearly, as there seem to be certain misconceptions.
This is a somewhat important clarification as I have seen this misconception too.
And could you have released –
– without the old-gen consoles? In pure theory, if we had decided that one day before the launch then yes; we might have released just the PC version
So could this have only been the new generation of consoles and PCs?
So the answer here is “no”: next-gens get a completely different version of the game ... there is no native next-gen release. The game runs on next-gens and takes advantage of how next-gens are performing, but it’s not like we had a next-gen version in our hands and decided to keep it on the shelf.
[some time ago] we decided upon a last-gen version and, as you can see, we have not released a proper next-gen version – we don’t have it ready yet.
That is an interesting issue with cross-platform games since the next-gen version of the game currently is a backwards compatible version. So they could sell the disc for the game, but they cannot control what console it will be played on so effectively, if you were to release on consoles, it would have to be released on both. But I still think the clear solution would have been to only release on PC first, or perhaps just not let the game be available for last-gen at all. But I guess they had promised early on that the game would be for last-gen and that was something that they did not want to back out of.
with regard to the console experience – we already fixed a lot of crashes with the last hotfix, and
this time again we will be mostly looking at crashes and game-breaking bugs. I sincerely hope that by
Christmas gamers will be able to enjoy the game on consoles; of course the major updates will come
in January and February, so, again, we humbly ask gamers to wait – and they’ll be able to have an even
better experience then.
The crashing on consoles should be fixed by Christmas, which would be the update on the 21st.
Most of the other questions were asking about specific data about sales and costs which they did not answer or said to wait for their annual report that'll be released in Q1.
After reading the full transcript, I'm only more confused and concerned about the internal workings at CD Projekt Red. Clearly, they were aware to some degree about the issues surrounding the last-gen consoles. Despite all of this, the Management Board kept pushing for the release of the game. Were they after the profit? Or, did they feel the pressure from the public that another delay would be too much negative press? Considering this project has been going on for at least 7 years, they must have felt the need to cash in now, but they must have also been aware of the negativity surrounding the release of a broken game?
