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A comment on Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020’s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles. Parent comment

Re:Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020’s biggest video game launch turn... by macd on Saturday December 19, 2020 @05:59PM (#25482086)
20-30 hours on a regular (launch model) Xbox One and the game completely crashes frequently, probably 20 times so far. This means you have to relaunch the game, get through to the main menu, then load your game. So at 3-5 minutes each time, that's an hour of my playtime just recovering from crashes.

Maybe 4-5 times I've run into a bug where my character can't move and I have to load a save, or the person I'm supposed to talk to or follow in a quest won't move onto the next action. This takes 5+ minutes to figure out that it's not going to happen and I need to reload.

A lot of the time it's clear that the game has a lot of things queued for loading and it's trying to catch up. You have to wait 30 seconds or so for it to load everything before you can trigger then next event. These are also the moments that usually trigger the crashes.

> Playing on Series X fwiw.

Most of the comments I've read that share your opinion, the person is inevitably playing on the pro version of the console. It feels really like they built the game for high end machines, and then did everything they could to get it working on the lower end machines. I don't know what the equivalent of building a 'mobile-first' website is in game development or if it's possible, but they clearly didn't do that.

But I'm pretty patient and forgiving of bugs, so I've still been enjoying the game despite the issues.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020’s biggest video game launch turn... by james-skemp on Sunday December 20, 2020 @10:03AM (#25486642)
> I don't know what the equivalent of building a 'mobile-first' website is in game development or if it's possible [...]

Sounds like the old 'progressive enhancement' (at least I think that phrase was 'replaced' by mobile-first, based upon personal experience).

While I first heard it used for web development, where you would build up your content and then add JavaScript and (enhanced) styling, there's no reason that can't be applied to game development as well.

In fact, I think you can look at PS4 Pro Enhanced games for how it was done well.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020’s biggest video game launch turn... by sgift on Sunday December 20, 2020 @10:53AM (#25487071)
We had this when game consoles were very dominant: PS3/Xbox360 era, start of the PS4/Xbox One era. Games were developed for consoles and then "touched up" for PC. It sucked. Starting from good machines and pushing them is far better imho. They should have cut off the base versions of both last gen consoles, but Sony/MS don't allow that afaik (e.g. either you don't deliver for PS4 at all or you deliver for PS4 and PS4 pro). At some point you have to realize that hardware is too old for something and accept it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020’s biggest video game launch turn... by james-skemp on Sunday December 20, 2020 @03:59PM (#25489442)
Agreed. I think the PS4 Pro and equivalent Xbox model really muddied the water when it came to the newest consoles, especially since both the PS5 and related Xbox version are at least backward compatible with the previous gen.

Target PC, make a version for the latest console gen.

[ Parent | on HN ]