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VAMatt on 08 February 2021
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Ka-pi96 said:
VAMatt said:

I think Cyberpunk has been the biggest disappointment in gaming history, and likely the most costly mistake.  If we assume 2 million refunds is accurate, my guess is they have lost at least 4 million sales between those refunds, the bad press, and being pulled from the PS store and flagged on the XB store.  That is massive. 

Anyone that doesn't think CDPR is hurting from this..... I don't even know what to say.  They got their ass kicked here.  The launch has been an absolute disaster for them.  Certainly, every developer and publisher have learned a big lesson.  

Personally, I think the game is good, but it failed to live up to the sky high expectations (that CDPR set). I think they could have given us the amazing game they promised, had they just let it cook a while longer.  But, they gambled with their reputation, and they lost.  Bigtime.  The loss of goodwill that they've suffered is likely more valuable than the sales lost on this particular title.  It will take them years to get their reputation back. 

Did they though?

I mean, if I were to offer an "amazing" deal on apples (that was actually a terrible deal) and sell them to 10 people, then 2 people figure it out and come back demanding a refund, did I lose 2 sales, or did I gain 8?

It's interesting to wonder actually, do you gain more sales by overhyping a product than you lose by disappointing people and therefore still have a net gain, or not? Given how common overhyping things is... maybe you do still have a net gain.

It is an interesting thought experiment. However, I think you may have a premise wrong. The issue was not so much that they overhyped the game. The issue is that they under delivered. It looks like they probably could have delivered on their promises, had they simply taken the time needed to do it. So, let's say they lost 2 million sales of the game right now, but they gained 3 million with their big hype machine. That would seem to be a net positive of 1 million sales. The thing is though, had they simply delayed the game, let's say one year, they would have just gotten all of those sales. So, in this hypothetical, there is no way for them to have been better off by releasing the game at this point.

It's not so simple in the real world, of course.  There are costs to delaying the game a year.  But, seeing as they're paying all those same developers to fix the game right now, post launch, rather than paying the developers to fix the game before launch, it would seem that the net cost of a delay was probably not that high. 

Beyond that, you have the lost sales going forward, because the game has shit reviews and a bad reputation. You also have lost sales on their next title, because of damage to their reputation. So, I don't see any way that they are better off for having over hyped and under delivered.  The extent to which they have harmed themselves probably cannot be calculated. But, I don't think there's any doubt that they have done real harm

Last edited by VAMatt - on 08 February 2021