Tech
Cyberpunk 2077’s Lesson: Making Big Games Has Never Been Harder – Barron's
Cyberpunk 2077 had a bumpy rollout, but may not be a flop.
Courtesy of Cyberbunk
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that the U.S. should dedicate itself to landing a man on the Moon. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong took his first walk on the lunar surface.
Polish videogame publisher
CD Projekt
(ticker: CDR.Poland) took about the same amount of time to make its latest opus Cyberpunk 2077, which launched in December. Unlike Armstrong, it didn’t quite stick the landing.
Put charitably, the launch of CD Projekt’s latest title was bumpy. After eight years of hype and a steady trickle of marketing materials from the company, including ads teasing actor Keanu Reeves lending his voice and likeness to a leading character, the product that arrived appeared unfinished, especially on prior-generation console systems.
The game was so difficult to play on the
Sony
(SNE) PlayStation 4 and
Microsoft
(MSFT) Xbox One systems that both companies offered refunds to angry consumers, and Sony went as far as pulling the game from its online store. While CD Projekt offered refunds too, and issued an apology, investors appear to be just as frustrated as gamers. Shares have declined nearly 30% since the launch, and a New York law firm has filed a class action suit on behalf of shareholders.
CD Projekt declined to make executives available for this article, and said in a statement the company would vigorously defend itself from litigation.
The Cyberpunk launch makes one thing clear about the contemporary videogame business: the biggest games are more complex than they have ever been, and much harder to make. Big games from publishers such as
Take-Two Interactive Software’s
(TTWO) smash hit Grand Theft Auto V have to function on multiple platforms, push the most powerful graphics and processor chips to their limits, and contend with the unpredictable ways players interact with the game and each other in online social settings. The industry’s risks—and rewards—have never been greater.
Unlike the world’s largest economy deciding to send a person to walk on the moon, CD Projekt doesn’t have the vast resources of the U.S. government at its disposal—it’s a relatively small publisher, with about 1,000 employees and a market value of $7.6 billion. But even if it could have thrown billions of dollars at developing Cyberpunk, it might not have made much of a difference.
“You can’t just throw a billion dollars, and you automatically get great games,”
Electronic Arts
(EA) Chief Studio Officer Laura Miele told Barron’s this week. “It’s so much more complicated and nuanced than that.”
Big modern games require several different disciplines of creative employees—such as software engineers, artists, designers, and composers—to come together and produce an entertainment product with a non-linear story, Miele says. Money may help with hiring talent, but on its own won’t make the game a good one. That talent needs to deeply understand not only video-game players, but also the intersection between technology and entertainment. Those skills aren’t easy to come by.
“It [takes] great talent and time. Time to iterate, time to get the game up on these multiple systems, and then getting player feedback,” Miele says. “It takes great instincts and a great caliber of creative talent to end up with a great game experience.”
One of the dangers built into CD Projekt’s near-decade-long bet on Cyberpunk is that the company doesn’t have a large catalog of existing franchises, unlike many U.S. publishers.
Cyberpunk is also a completely new franchise, the launch of which is one of the biggest risks publishers can take, and can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Barclays videogame analyst Mario Lu. Even if the gameplay is good, if players form a negative view of a new title—for any number of reasons—that might destroy any chance it has of success.
Weeks after launch, CD Projekt doesn’t appear to be in danger of producing a flop. The company has sold 13 million copies, net of refunds, about five million more units than the eight million pre-launch orders it received.
The personal-computer version of the game has been something of a critical success, despite glitches and bugs—though the same isn’t true for the prior-generation-console versions, which has been called unplayable. Barron’s found that the best way to experience Cyberpunk 2077 is on a PC or Xbox Series X. But amid pandemic-related shortages of
Nvidia’s
(NVDA) top-notch graphics cards and Xbox Series X, getting the right system might not be possible.
As an alternative, players can opt to play the game on Google’s cloud streaming service called Stadia. Making the game for Stadia has trade offs too, however. Like most cloud-streaming services there can be a slight input lag, and it appears to be running the version of the game ported to consoles, rather than the PC version, which has support for real-time ray tracing, a technology that makes images more realistic. It also costs the developer valuable resources to port the code.
If a new franchise such as Cyberpunk doesn’t do well, that can hurt the stock in the short run. But shares of the larger U.S. developers have typically rebounded relatively quickly from such disappointments. EA is a good example. While its 2019 launch of Anthem—a fresh franchise—wasn’t as successful as investors were hoping, its stock still gained another 12% that year after it introduced the game. EA’s backbone franchises such as its line of FIFA soccer games can deliver relatively reliable returns, and years-old franchises such as The Sims, can continue to bring in revenue through additional content.
“This is entertainment, not everything is going to work out,” Miele says. “But our odds, and our evidence of success is quite high relative to other entertainment mediums. You have to be introspective about what worked and what didn’t, and carry that forward and continue to invest. You have to be fearless, and you have to have courage to listen to our players.”
Write to Max A. Cherney at max.cherney@barrons.com
Vittoria Releases New Peyote & Mezcal XC Race Tires
Maxxis Team Spec Aspen ST Tire
New DT Swiss 240 DEG Hubs
Kali Protectives’ New Full Face Helmets
Industry Nine’s SOLiX M Hubs & Wheelsets
Michelin’s Aggressive New Wild Enduro Tires
Praxis’ New Flat Pedals, Stem, & Carbon Bottle Cage
Transmission Cage Upgrades from Kogel, Ceramicspeed, and Cascade Components
Randoms Round 1 – Sea Otter 2024
Madrone Cycles’ SRAM Eagle Repair Kits & Prototype Derailleur
Vorsprung’s New Telum Coil Shock
EXT’s Vaia Inverted DH Fork & Updated Coil Shocks
Randoms Round 2: New Tools, Goggles, Grips, Racks, & More – Sea Otter 2024
What’s New in Women’s MTB Apparel at Sea Otter 2024
Even More Randoms – Sea Otter 2024
Randoms Round 3: Dario’s Treasures
What’s New for the Kids at Sea Otter 2024
Deity Releases New Stems, Grips, & Pedals
Dario’s Final Sea Otter Randoms
Brian’s Randoms from Sea Otter 2024
Videos
With roots dating back to 1991, the Sea Otter Classic is one of the biggest biking events and tradeshows each year and brings together all sides of the biking industry from athletes to brands, spectators and consumers. Taking place in April in the sunny hills of Monterey, California, that means this event really feels like the official start to the biking season in North America. Christina Chappetta covers why it’s much different to an indoor European biking tradeshow, a World Cup racing weekend or even Crankworx mountain bike festival, in that it encompasses nearly ALL of the biking disciplines, including road cycling, enduro, downhill, dual slalom, XC, trials riding and more.
In the past fortnight, we have seen large amount of new tech releases. However, Sea Otter 2024 represents some of the first opportunities for many riders to see these things in the flesh, as well as take a deeper dive into what the product aims to do.
Welcome to a video summary from Day 2 of the Sea Otter Classic.
There are so many giveaways, interesting new products and colourful characters at Sea Otter Classic that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Ben Cathro takes a lap of the venue to find his favourites.
Well, that was quick. On May 18, a respected industry insider predicted a new display technology for the iPad Air that’s expected in the coming days—Apple just announced its latest special event.
The new 12.9-inch iPad Air, the report claimed, would have the same miniLED backlighting currently found on the larger iPad Pro, using the leftover inventory from the current Pro as that model switches to OLED. That was exciting news.
But now, Ross Young, the analyst who made the claim, has changed his mind. The new prediction, shared with paid subscribers only, is that the miniLED technology won’t be coming to the iPad Air, in either size.
While it made sense that the inventory could be maximized in this way, it now “makes sense” that it won’t.
Young says that while he’d heard from supply chain sources that it would, he’d now had contact from “even more supply chain sources” that it won’t.
And the reason this change of heart now makes sense is that this miniLED technology is expensive, so it would be surprising if it made it to the iPad Air, which is more affordable than the Pro.
That’s not quite all the analyst shared. He also said that there are now reports of a new iPad coming later in the year. This is a 12.9-inch iPad, with miniLED backlighting and it could arrive between October and December this year.
function loadConnatixScript(document)
if (!window.cnxel)
window.cnxel = ;
window.cnxel.cmd = [];
var iframe = document.createElement(‘iframe’);
iframe.style.display = ‘none’;
iframe.onload = function()
var iframeDoc = iframe.contentWindow.document;
var script = iframeDoc.createElement(‘script’);
script.src = ‘//cd.elements.video/player.js’ + ‘?cid=’ + ’62cec241-7d09-4462-afc2-f72f8d8ef40a’;
script.setAttribute(‘defer’, ‘1’);
script.setAttribute(‘type’, ‘text/javascript’);
iframeDoc.body.appendChild(script);
;
document.head.appendChild(iframe);
loadConnatixScript(document);
(function()
function createUniqueId()
return ‘xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx’.replace(/[xy]/g, function(c)
var r = Math.random() * 16 );
const randId = createUniqueId();
document.getElementsByClassName(‘fbs-cnx’)[0].setAttribute(‘id’, randId);
document.getElementById(randId).removeAttribute(‘class’);
(new Image()).src = ‘https://capi.elements.video/tr/si?token=’ + ’44f947fb-a5ce-41f1-a4fc-78dcf31c262a’ + ‘&cid=’ + ’62cec241-7d09-4462-afc2-f72f8d8ef40a’;
cnxel.cmd.push(function ()
cnxel(
playerId: ’44f947fb-a5ce-41f1-a4fc-78dcf31c262a’,
playlistId: ‘aff7f449-8e5d-4c43-8dca-16dfb7dc05b9’,
).render(randId);
);
)();
This is intriguing. What could it be? Assuming that the iPad Pro and iPad Air are released in May, it’s extremely unlikely either will be updated later in the year. And if the iPad Air isn’t pricey enough for miniLED to be included, what tablet could Apple be introducing that is the same size as the bigger Pro, with a pricey screen tech, which would sit between the Air and the Pro, it seems?
Young is highly reliable, but this seems slightly preposterous to me. The only other iPad in the range due a refresh is the regular iPad (at 12.9-inches, the iPad mini is clearly out of the picture) and that doesn’t seem likely either.
It seems to me that any regular iPad will almost certainly have the same screen size as now, 10.9 inches. The regular iPad only grew to this size screen in the current generation, and Apple almost never changes designs after one iteration.
Perhaps things will become clearer as the year goes on.
Tech
Woman who left beaten dad on floor for 2 days was 'overwhelmed' with his care, judge told – CBC.ca
A Calgary woman who abused her sick, 77-year-old father was “overwhelmed” at the task of caring for him, a judge heard Wednesday at a sentencing hearing.
In January, Tara Picard, 52, pleaded guilty to charges of assault and failing to provide the necessaries of life after her father (whom CBC News is not naming) was found injured on a basement floor, where he’d been lying for two days.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Donna Spaner and defence lawyer Shaun Leochko asked the judge to allow Picard to serve her sentence in the community under conditions as part of a conditional sentence order.
Justice Indra Maharaj agreed to a two-year conditional sentence for Picard followed by a year of probation.
“There is no doubt she became overwhelmed,” said Spaner in her submissions. “There is no question Ms. Picard has remorse.”
Leochko told the judge that caring for her father “was really more than [Picard] could handle.”
Maharaj heard that Picard is Indigenous and was the victim of abuse growing up. She lives in a sober dorm-style facility and is working with a mental health and addictions navigator, according to Leochko.
A ‘willingness to give back’
As part of the sentence, Picard must complete 300 hours of community service.
Justice Maharaj commended Picard for “taking that on.”
“That shows me Ms. Picard sincerely does recognize what has happened here,” said the judge.
“What I interpret from that is Ms. Picard’s willingness to give back to her community.”
During Picard’s plea, court heard that in November 2021, Picard and her father fought over his drinking.
Nurses discover victim
The victim suffers from a number of medical issues, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia and alcoholism.
At the time, home-care registered nurses were assigned to help provide supplementary care.
Nurses found the victim wearing a soiled adult diaper and suffering from two black eyes with blood on his head.
He told the nurses who discovered him that he’d been there for two days.
Picard admitted she knew her father had fallen and she had “administered a number of physical blows.”
Investment Statistics (10 Investment Statistics Investors Need To Know) – Forbes
Germans Debate Longer Hours and Later Retirement as Economic Growth Falters – Bloomberg
Meet Shannon Waters, The Narwhal’s B.C. politics and environment reporter – The Narwhal
Silver investment demand jumped 12% in 2019
12 Bizarre Things People Did Just To Make Social Media Content
Global Media Markets, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F – TV and Radio Broadcasting, Film and Music, Information Services, Web Content, Search Portals And Social Media, Print Media, & Cable – GlobeNewswire
-
Art24 hours ago
The unmissable events taking place during London’s Digital Art Week
-
Politics19 hours agoOpinion: Fear the politicization of pensions, no matter the politician
-
Politics18 hours ago
Pecker’s Trump Trial Testimony Is a Lesson in Power Politics
-
Science18 hours ago
NASA Celebrates As 1977’s Voyager 1 Phones Home At Last
-
Media17 hours ago
B.C. puts online harms bill on hold after agreement with social media companies
-
Business17 hours ago
Oil Firms Doubtful Trans Mountain Pipeline Will Start Full Service by May 1st
-
Art20 hours ago
Turner Prize: Shortlisted artist showcases Scottish Sikh community
-
Media11 hours ago
B.C. online harms bill on hold after deal with social media firms
