Topic: The everything Xbox thread

It's bound to get worse with pre-order numbers as high as they were. While the internet can make it seem like the whole world is in uproar, I'd be surprised to hear that more than 10% of those pre-orders get refunded. And kerching - the whole process of massively hyping a game and releasing it in whatever state it finds itself pays off again.

@Zuljaras Well, to be totally honest: plenty of games were buggy or incomplete back then as well, or needed patching. Levels freezing, graphical glitches, translation errors etc, etc. Games were just a lot simpler and smaller, obviously.

But the difference is that the bugs stayed right where they were, because we didn't have any options to update or "day 1" patch them...

@ThanosReXXX and still those games are fully playable and people love them. I do not think they could say the same about some day one games this generation.

But yeah they are much more complex. But back in the day they did not have engines like Unreal, Unity and Game Maker. They had to do their own engines and deal with the limitations.

Today they can just power trough with the beefy specs.

The biggest reason for crappy day one modern games is still the dealines set by the management.

Also can you even imagine back in the day to have a Mega Drive game that needs to be recalled from shops?

Instant death! Now they can lie and patch a bad game to something playable which is both a positive and negative thing.

@Zuljaras I do seem to recall a certain practically unplayable and mid-level freezing E.T. game on the Atari 2600...

@ThanosReXXX Ah sorry I have never followed Atari stuff. For me the gaming journey began with the NES.

Still those releases like the one you mentioned were basically screwed in the worst way possible

Heh, Atari never recovered from that, though, @ThanosReXXX ....

@Dezzy If this were a trial, I think that argument could be moved a few ways. On on hand NMS lacked advertised features at launch. OTOH, it was promoted as a live service product where content would be delivered over a long term period on an ongoing basis. In that regard NMS was exactly as advertised. They promoted a live service, delivered a live service, and the content was added over time within reason. Cyberpunk on the other hand simply doesn't work on the supported platforms out of the box.

Assassin's Creed: Unity was also broken on the disk, but there was also a day one patch to remedy that, even if the patch was obnoxious for its day and age, leading to the problem that many customers couldn't actually obtain the patch. A bit of the difference between Unity and this is that when Unity released there was an expectation of running from the disc, and today there (unfortunately) is not. Also Ubisoft never hid the product or failed to deliver review copies for anything outside PC.....

@Zuljaras Mostly I see the bigger games becoming live services more and more, that way there's no clear definition of expected content, completion deadlines, or a hard window on monetization. It'll all blur more and more into an MMO-like mire, nor a need to move onto a new product as long as more can be squeezed out of the existing one. Like Rockstar answering the question about if they will still be working on single player games by pointing out all the single player content they plan to add to GTAV Online.

@gcunit I'm afraid of that as well, though we're still in the time before the lawsuits roll in. And the sales impact doesn't occur until the following release. This one sold because everyone believed the hype. Next time they won't. Also, CDPR is a bit of a side example because the majority of their preorders were on PC, where the game does (more or less) work. You'd have to look at just the console sales. Even 10% is a LOT considering all involved parties. The fact that both Sony and MS had to even set up a refund response to this game at all, and Sony had to delist the game due to the refunding, tells us the numbers here aren't pleasant. And that's only digital. It doesn't factor in all the retail sales where consumers are getting stonewalled by retailers policies.

They are going to "profit" from this, but I do think the effect will linger in the industry. They'll wait until the next batch of kiddies for whom the world is fresh and new and every hype machine is always trustworthy come of age to pull it again. That's the real problem with this industry. With its youth focus, every 7 years they're selling to kids who were in diapers the last time they pulled a stunt and think everything that happens in the world is the first time its ever happened. They always know they can reset and keep pulling the same stunts.

@Zuljaras Hah, to but Thanos' comment in perspective, I've compared Cyberpunk to E.T. often. E.T. on Atari was basically similarly broken in the pre-patch era. It was super hyped due to it's tie-in with the mega-hit Spielberg film. The result was a full recall. They dug a big landfill and dumped all the carts into it. The impact however is the infamous part. It was the final straw. An over-saturated industry with race-to-the-bottom prices (and quality) already caused fatigue, and the broken E.T. put it over the edge. The two contributed to the great video games crash of '83 in the US. In that crash, video games lost such favor ability with the public, with so many unsold titles languishing on shelves even at deep clearance, that most retailers in the US pulled all video game merchandise and refused to carry it again. Video games was certified a fad, and was good and well dead.

It was not until Nintendo resurrected it with their iron fisted policies of only 2 games per publisher per year, seal of quality, price enforcement, etc. that they convinced retailers to buy in again. It's not an exaggeration, Nintendo literally saved video games in the US. Not just saved. Reanimated. it was already dead. And everyone warned Yamauchi not to enter the market, it was a death wish. Only because he was pig-headed Yamauchi did video games ever actually return here.

With digital stores it can't quite happen like that again, but the negative consumer interest could indeed return in the form of ambivalence and reduced sales.

@BruceCM That's not true, haven't you seen that lovely hotel they plan on building? But it's all a win. The fall of Atari gave us Chick E. Cheese.

Yeah, I don't remember Sony having to take a game off it's digital store so soon after release before & certainly not for this reason, @NEStalgia .... Some of that seems to be down to their somewhat weird refund system that doesn't really cover pre-ordered games, though
I certainly think a lot of people will be more cautious about the next CD PR game, even if that isn't for 10 years & assuming they do fix this one.

@BruceCM Yeah, Sony spun the delisting as being a result of the game's quality, but it seems clear it has to do with the fact CDPR told everyone Sony and MS would handle refunds when Sony's policy more or less states they don't. They can't make an exception so the only legal way around it was to just "recall" the product.

It does highlight just how bad Sony's policy is though. You can request a refund if you haven't downloaded the game. By the way, we pushed the game to your console 4 days before release. No refunds.

Games returns have been a sore point for a long long time, even before the digital age. I always hear about people returning games in the UK on these forums which seems so alien to me. Game/software sales have been sold as-is all sales final for decades in the US. You couldn't return games even in the 80s and 90's. That's why we all rented!

But then when you could return, people abuse it. There's those weird basement dwelling super-geniuses that somehow can beat any game in under 48 hours and return it, having completed it. I always want to stand up for consumers against corporate abuse, but every so often I'm reminded about how badly consumers abuse corporations in return and I start sympathizing with our illuminati overlords.

@BruceCM
I think they'll definitely fix it. The patch that just came out has improved the frame-rate hugely on PS4/Xbox One. When The Witcher 3 came out that was pretty buggy but they sorted that out. I do think there's a bit of over-reaction to this and CDPR have already proved they can improve the game with patch 1.05 and they'll continue to do so

Yeah but it's not like you could play a game digitally before release, @NEStalgia .... & it'd show how long you'd played it for, etc Just because some people could beat a game & return it for a full refund hardly means most people do that

@NEStalgia Steam has gotten along just fine with its refund policy, which prevents abuse in all but the shortest of games.

Anyway, consumers wouldn't be so keen on abusing 'the system' if corporate exploitation wasn't the norm, I imagine. Even in the hyper-capitalistic United States, where class warfare is rampant, the majority of people are basically honest and try to follow the law as best they can.

Oh, yeah, I think they will, too, @Magonigal .... It's more how they definitely should have tested the game on PS4 & XBox One, if they didn't do so enough, since those were the consoles it was always coming out for! I'm lucky to be playing it on PC, where it's a lot better

@Ralizah Yeah, but who buys games full price at launch on Steam? The game is 3 years old and 10 patches in by the time anyone on Steam plays them.

I used to think that way until I realized all the scummy things consumers do "because they can" with abusive returns. Corporate exploitation may be the norm, but I've come to realize consumer exploitation of business is equally as severe. I can't see it as black and white as corporations versus consumers anymore. Instead it's a free for all where everyone just wants to screw everyone else over for their own benefit. If a consumer could topple a 500,000 person company to get a plasma TV for free they'd do it.

@BruceCM
Unfortunately i don't think the older consoles can really handle the game. It should have been next-gen consoles and PC only but they had to bring it out as cross-gen

WHERE.

DO.

I.

SIGN?

Well, it was always coming to the XB1 & PS4, @Magonigal .... In fact, that's currently the only actual version of the game, since they haven't done the upgrades for the current consoles yet! If it'd been like PS3 to 4, you wouldn't be able to play it on the PS5 Perhaps unfortunate timing with releasing around the same time but I don't think cancelling the PS4 & XBox One versions at the last minute would have been a good move, either

@NEStalgia This is the world major corporate entities have created with generations of unchecked greed and labor exploitation. Several major companies in the U.S. still pay starvation wages to the majority of their employees while the people at the top live in ungodly luxury. And we don't even want to talk about how they pay and treat people in developing countries.

So, you know, if a few enterprising thieves manage to knock a penny of their bottom line and/or game the system, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it. It's not something I'm going to do, though, and most people are the same way.

Anyway, none of this matters. There's no excuse for Sony to have a non-existent refund policy when storefronts like Steam are showing you can have one that doesn't really allow for much in the way of abuse.

@Zuljaras Haha, no worries, man. But having said that, between me and @NEStalgia, we can probably come up with quite the considerable list of "pre-internet" games that are just as buggy and/or incomplete, except back then things were obviously a lot simpler, and it was harder to do something about it. Nowadays, in the age of internet and free anonymous complaining every day, it's a whole different ball game altogether...

@BruceCM Nope, they most certainly didn't. A shame, though, because for me, both Atari and Nintendo are a VERY fond childhood memory.

Yeah, I only had their attempt at a PC myself, @ThanosReXXX .... Would never have been into most of the games they did but the brand was still a big part of my childhood, just being around so much