Today we are jumping into some rumors (update: now confirmed) via GRY-Online.pl that run parallel with rumors about Cyberpunk 2077s delay earlier this week via Borys Niespielak about the game currently running into technological issues and limitations on mainly the base level Xbox One.
If you guys are unaware there was a Polish Podcast with a well-known Polish journalist who is known for his movie and game industry connections, where he lists things about Cyberpunk 2077 and CD PROJEKT RED, mostly correlated to why CDPR issued their delay and how the game is struggling on the basic versions of modern consoles. If you want to check out that video I’ll link it in the pinned comment.
Earlier today however there was yet another article posted by Polish publication GRY-online via the publisher of PolskiGamedev.pl and previous head of journalism at CD-Action monthly with more rumors regarding some of the internal workings of CDPR, and how they are tackling this alleged problem.
The publisher mentions that native teams of QLOC, Testronic and Crunching Koalas are participating in the work on Cyberpunk 2077, due to the immense scale of the project CDPR is working on. CDPR seems to have outsourced companies who all have niches in converting, optimizing and testing games to help with the project which backs what Bory Niespielak has mentioned in the delay of Cyberpunk mainly being console oriented.
QLOC is a polish company that is recognized worldwide as one of the best porting vendors, with a team of over 300 specialists who are experienced in Quality Assurance, Localization + Art Design. They have worked on big AAA titles like BioShock, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, Hellblade, Steet Figher and more in various porting and quality assurance.
Testronic has 20 years of experience partnering with video game and entertainment companies, who also work mainly on Quality Assurance, localization, compliance and certification and customer support.
Finally we have Crunching Koalas who seem to be a studio more focused on indie titles, in again porting, co-development and publishing support.
Now in addition the article mentions there may be additional studios helping at the moment, and Marcin Iwinski also allegedly mentioned that 4 studios worked on Cyberpunk, but the video in which he supposedly says this is in Chinese, so I can’t verify this. If you do speak Chinese, I’ll link the video in the pinned comment, but as it stands this has not been confirmed.
My obvious and not revolutionary assumption here is that CDPR are really aiming for quality and there is likely a substantial amount of bugs holding this release back, and CDPR is bolstering their team with companies who have a specialized niche in the final stage processes of cleaning up a game for release. In this sense, it seems like the more cooks in the kitchen, the better to catch most bugs and glitches before Cyberpunk goes gold.
Corey Balrog has chimed into the delay and optimization conversation, and as someone who went through his fair share of hiccups with God of War having something like 3000 bugs when it was supposed to be 0 and ready for launch, I think his words are assuring in knowing that its not about f the studio will get there, its just when and to what efficacy.
In my opinion, if this is true, more power to CDPR, fly in the experts get things sorted properly get more eyes on the issue, get more people in there to brainstorm solutions, double down and make sure things go right the first time around on launch.
In some additional news, there are allegedly some layoffs at polish publisher CDP, which is oddly enough not related to CD project or cd projekt red, which seems to threaten the release of the game in Poland. CDPR has responses saying that all pre-release orders for cyberpunk 2077 placed from them will be honored, so if you were worried about that one, rest assured you will get your copy.
