3 Things Cyberpunk 2077’s Launch (and a Couple of Other Games) Taught Me About MVPs?
Should have CDPR delayed the launch for PS4 and Xbox One? Can they recover?
I am a gamer, a programmer, a wannabe writer & maker that believes that we should use any opportunity to learn. I have noticed online lots of news surrounding Cyberpunk 2077.
That’s why I decided to create this kind of case study surrounding the launch of this highly anticipated game.
There are lots of questions and hate surrounding Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, mainly on PS4 and Xbox One.
What can we learn from this? Are game launches relevant for makers or are they a different beast altogether?
Prelude
Before learning anything from Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, let’s look at some other failed launches.
PUBG
People don’t actually include PUBG in the list of failed launches. Why would they?
PUBG is still an immensely popular game, and by the sheer number of sales at launch, you cannot really consider its launch as a failed one.
Did it have bugs? Yeah boi, it had! Lots of bugs and performance problems. Some bugs were even game-breaking, but people don’t really talk about that anymore.
What about its performance on PS4 and Xbox One?
Well, here’s a snippet from this article from GeeksULTD.
Both of the consoles, however, struggle to keep up the 30fps mark when the game starts, and the fps drop as far as 15fps when in the pre-match lobby. The Xbox consoles also had to struggle with the performance stability and so does the PS4 but the PS4 Pro handles it pretty well.
So, the game was a kind of failed launch on consoles. The performance problems disappointed people, but they were willing to push through because it was fun.
The thing to learn from this launch is that if you manage expectations correctly, you can avoid showing up on failed lists. Since this game was in early access for such a long time, people got used to it as a “work in progress” type of product.
Fallout 76
This game is probably included in any top failed games of all time. The problems are not only related to funny glitches or game-breaking bugs.
The problems are more identity based, milking the Fallout franchise did not really work that well with this release. You can search online all the problems of this game, at launch or otherwise.
At the moment of writing, the game is rather okay, but at launch, there were just so many problems with it, that you couldn’t talk about failed games without talking about Fallout 76.
The conclusion from this review from IGN summarizes it very well:
The rich wasteland map of Fallout 76 is wasted on a mess of bugs, conflicting ideas, and monotony.
While they tried to go the same route as PUBG and present their game as “beta” or “work in progress”, the problem was that most people came with high expectations because of the previous successful releases like Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
So, what to learn from this launch? When you start a product with user’s feedback in mind, also take feedback from people while deciding on the way just so you don’t deliver a product that nobody asked for.
No Man’s Sky
Well, at the moment of writing this, the game is superb! I played it 2 years after release and I had a blast! There are just so many things to do, so much to explore, it’s actually super fun!
For sure, this game is better with friends, you can even work together to build the same base. That’s awesome! But this was not possible when the game launched.
This game was even investigated for false advertising.
The problems with No Man’s Sky are beyond any graphical bugs or glitches. Here we are talking about a lot of missing features from the marketing material.
The ambition was very high, and this created a huge hype that eventually led to disappointed customers.
One of the biggest problems with the game at launch is that there was no multiplayer component after being somewhat advertised.
But in the end, the idea was good and it could be built upon. This review from IGN actually described it pretty well.
This ambitious game reached for the stars, but its reach exceeded its grasp by light years.
The thing to learn here is one of the basic marketing mistakes - don’t over-promise and under-deliver.
Interlude
Okay, so did you notice any pattern in the games mentioned above?
There’s always a matter of managing the hype and the expectation. Sure, from the business point of view it might be an excellent idea to create a big hype. The hype surrounding the launch means that you will have better sales.
Let’s look at some numbers that can put this hype in some sort of perspective:
PUBG: In the launch month, it had 3,080,769 peak players and 1,436,158.5 average players according to SteamCharts.
No Man’s Sky: In the launch month, it had 212,321 peak players and 36,976.4 average players according to SteamCharts.
Unfortunately, since Fallout 76 only launched on Steam in April 2020, it had its launch month numbers of 21,931 peak players and 15,807.5 average players.
Sure, these numbers are only related to the number of players on the Steam platform and do not account for the PS4, Xbox, and other marketplace platforms.
But we can all agree that these games were highly anticipated, and lots of people bought them.
Let’s look at Cyberpunk 2077’s numbers in the first week of the release: 830,387 peak players and 505,225.9 average players. Again, these numbers are only for Steam.
According to this article from GameRant, the game actually sold 8 million units before launch.
Well, we can see that there is a real hype surrounding this game.
But this hype is not an excuse for the poor performance on PS4 and Xbox One.
When is a launch considered a failed one?
When it doesn’t sell as expected? When people are disappointed and are requesting refunds?
I would say a failed product launch is when most of the customers expected something else and are leaving your product - fast. If people are also complaining about their experience, you can bet you have done something wrong.
If you sell a lot and refund a lot, you are basically in a worse position than not selling that much. That’s because people that requested refunds feel either cheated or misled and it’s harder to get them to return to your product.
What can we learn from this?
You cannot really create hype without having disappointment directly connected to it. That’s because people tend to imagine that you will deliver more than you actually promise.
There are some rules that you would need to abide by in order to minimize the disappointment:
Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. (No Man’s Sky)
Don’t deliver products that don’t work. (Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 and Xbox One)
Don’t commit to something you cannot deliver. (Fallout 76)
Yeah, I get it! You know all this but your situation is different. You are a solo maker and have a tiny product that you launched. It’s not even a full product, it’s an MVP.
Why should you care about game launches?
Because there are good ways and bad ways to create an MVP or a product.
It’s vital to offer the right blend of functionality, reliability, usability, and emotional design.
Here’s how I see Cyberpunk 2077’s release on PS4 and Xbox One:
✔️ Emotional design
❌ Usable
❌ Reliable
✔️ Functional
Judging by this chart, it might have been the best decision to just delay the release on PS4 and Xbox One. Yes, this would have still disappointed people, but at least it did not under-deliver on those points.
For sure, as a small maker, you have another benefit. You can be transparent about it from the start. That transparency also needs to be reflected in the price. If you sell an expensive product, people expect an excellent product.
The only way you can charge a lot of money for something that is not really that good is by having some kind of B2B contract with some big corporation that doesn’t care that much about the user’s experience.
Postlude
So, we can see that this happens all the time. Products cannot live up to the hype that was created around them.
The best way to avoid this would be to not create that hype on launch.
But what happens if you did create the hype and the product did not live up to it?
You repent! Yeah, that’s also a possibility, but it could take some years to get it done. You have the moral duty of getting the product to what it was supposed to be and not abandoning it. (Good example: No Man’s Sky. Bad example: Dawn of War 3)
When you have this kind of failed launch, you are not only damaging the reputation of the product. You also damage the reputation of the company or person behind the product.
Some companies can keep themselves hated (EA Games) and still be profitable, but don’t think for a minute that you can pull that trick as a solo founder.
When a big company messes something, you objectify it. See how I constructed the sentence? You don’t search for the director behind the product, you directly take the company’s name.
But when you fail with your product as an indie maker, you basically make a bad name of yourself.
So, how do you do it?
Be honest, be humble, and don’t claim your product solves global hunger if it doesn’t at launch.
The last thing that you want is to have your name associated with a scam.
Just use the underdog formula, promise the minimum, over-deliver!
P.S. Since Christmas is around the corner, there will be no practice for this week, other than thinking about what you just read 😀.
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