SvennoJ said:
VAMatt said:
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 height 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 |
In the real world the new generation was rushing along.
What choices did they have:
- Scrap the old gen versions, which would mean all console versions as there is no current gen console version yet, 46% less sales.
- Delay the game, new gen is coming, current gen version will sell less and less, more competition is coming, less sales.
Also a split release (first on PC) would have undermined the hype build up for the current gen versions. Those nearly 4 million console pre-orders would have slowly evaporated the longer it would take to get a current gen version out, the more got known about the true version of the game.
True, they will have lost sales going forward, yet they had 8 million sales in their pocket and all it took to cash in on them was release the game. A bird in the hand... CP2077 still had the status of first next gen looking game (in trailers and mind share anyway), any more delays would diminish that, as well as any more information coming out about the real game.
So no, delaying one year would most likely mot have gotten them all those sales. Delaying one year is not enough to deliver what was marketed, just enough to deliver a stable game on all platforms, yet now releasing in the middle of a bunch of new next gen games. Also the pandemic drove sales and pre-orders, next year that's hopefully gone, plus the economic fallout, less time and money to waste on games.
It was a get rich quick gamble, sacrificing their reputation, but banking probably more money out of the game than delaying more while the hype slowly deflates. |
