forgot this game even existed

From their words, it's obvious that they want Bethesda levels of success or more, but that doesn't mean that they have to make the same mistakes of Bethesda. Just because that was the only way Bethesda found to reach success, it doesn't mean that they can't find another way to get there.

And while cyberpunk is a niche genre, that has nothing to do with the game sales. Sword & Sorcery settings aren't popular either and that hasn't stopped the Elder Scrolls or The Witcher games to sell well. It's how you tell the story or, in this case, how you make the game, that will decide the future of it.

But despite all that, the reason I'm curious and excited for Cyberpunk 2077 is because CD Projekt can't reskin The Witcher 3, but have to make a completely new game with new gameplay (because guns vs swords), and I want to see how they manage to do that.

Does ms have marketing partnership?

Its CDPR just let them do their thing.

I think what CDPR are forgetting is that from Oblivion which shipped about 6 million earlier in it's lifespan, it was greatly helped by trade ins, friends giving copies (thats how I got mine and I bought Skyrim Day 1 after it) and sales, etc. By the time Skyrim rolled around about double the sold through audience had played the game. I think they're being extremely unrealistic about how it should be selling, especially on these new platforms which a lot of people (myself included) still don't own. When I do get a new PC Witcher 3 is one of the first games to go through and I suspect I'm not alone in that.

Yeah, that's the thing, I kinda think they need to go Bethesda way if they want similar level of success - I think core WRPG can sell some 5-6 mil copies at best, and even that is with a lot of hype - Bethesda sales keep rising due to them giving up more of a classic RPG experience with every new game to attract even more mainstream audience.

As for S&S setting, when it comes to c/W/RPGs, there isn't really any other setting even remotely as popular as that one, so cyberpunk is quite niche compared to it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to 2077, I'm also curious to see how they'll handle it - honestly, I'm cautiously optimistic, I think CDPR still have lot of integrity, but while I liked Witcher 3, I felt that Witcher 2 was much better game, and that some of design choices were made due to things I've mentioned above.

Why ? So that the character may have no expression, be totaly souless and the story can be super badly written like in Fallout 4 and everybody will say its OK cause they got to "chose theyre own story" ? If its not a defined character go the Shepard/Inquisitor route, where the character was defined but you could change its apearence, otherwise its a recipe to deliver terrible storylines and uninteresing main characters.

Have you ever played old school tabletop RPG's at all?, because the majority of those require you to make up your own character, behaviour, backstory etc, everything to make you immersed in the game using your imagination, that's mostly how some western RPG's work like with Kingdom of Amalur, Fallout, Elder Scrolls etc. As far as we know CDPR hasn't given us a single defined character nor presented one that will represent the game or being part of the story which leads me to believe it's going to be like a Western table top style in which you make up your own character with traits and added details, different voices while still having the dialogue wheel.

The thing to also take not of is that some folk do like making up their own characters and in the recent case of Fallout 4, not all fans were happy with having their character talk since they used their imagination to add to the game to immerse themselves which again is part of tabletop RPG gaming which also happened to make it;s way into video games and is a legit thing, it's not a poor design choice or flaw either. Those that dislike silent characters are most likely going to have to put up with them or go with something else, Mass Effect has a new title coming so that can tide over fans of predefined characters with set voices.

I play tabletop all the time, in fact I was playing D&D 5th ed today morning with my long time group. The difference is, tabletop is organic, it doesnt have a set structure the DM makes the adventure and the story but he adapts it to how the players react and construct theyre characters. If I say I play a cleric that has gone mad after being possessed by a demonic entity, and now hes paranoid and thinks everyoen is possessed, the DM might actualy put someone possessed in a village and Id try to convinve my group that that person was under demonic influence, and no one would believe me and thered be lots of roleplay in the following interactions this storyline would provide.

A videogame, on the other hand, doesnt think, it has a set structure, and it also doesnt depend on your imagination, it needs to animate the character, when the character doesnt have a name, a face nor expressions he also doesnt have a purpose on the set world the game provides you, I could make my paranoid cleric backstory but Id never meet anything that would play on that backstory nor would my character even emote differently if he were to find a demon.

Fallout (3 and 4, never played 1 and 2 to say anythign) or Elder Scrolls (Oblivion and Skyrim, also never played the others) are agmes about visiting random places and killing stuf, ppl try to say theyre games were you make your own story but you dont, theres a set structure everyone follows and its not changeable, some sidequests you may do or not and a very poorly written and shallow main story. Mass Effect, Drgaon Age and Witcher on the other hand offer deep imersive experiences, even DA 2 wich is just lower quality than the others ofer an imersive story, cause they integrate you, the player, to the setting, other than offering you a souless main character that dont have much expression and is just a random dude on the world. You can shape your character to an extent, buts always withim the boundarys of the game, therefore if the character dont have a preset "skeleton" it feels like he isnt interacting with the world.

Just to conclude, its exactly because I play tabletop that I dont liek the completly no preset character creation type of game, I know the character Im creating will still be limited by the game and wont have a real purpose because the devs didnt give him one, I know how true character creation and development works from playing tabletop, devs cant fool me. Imagine how Final Fnatasy VII would feel if Cloud were a mute dude with no name, blank expressions and no backstory. 

You have apparently never played some of the great c/W/RPGs that have 'create your own hero' approach AND great (or at least good) stories on top of it - like Fallout 1/2, Gothic 1/2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, KOTOR 1/2...even in Planescape: Torment, what is generally considered the best written c/W/RPG (if not RPG, period) of all times it's up to you to shape The Nameless One as you see fit.

Anyway, I see you're a bit younger, so you must've missed some of those games and you're automatically connecting 'create your own hero' with Bethesda level of bad...which is bad, there's no argument there, they are probabaly the worst in industry in last 2 decades when it comes to stories and characters.

But there are other devs that do it right, and that's what I would like to see from 2077 (and it seems, what we'll get), game that gives you more options than what Witcher offered.