During a recent interview, catching platform holders and retailers off guard.
Sony's refund policy remains rather strict, especially compared to Microsoft and Steam; regardless, the former had no choice but to issue rebates to PlayStation s who requested them. The publisher took it a step further, though, pulling the sci-fi title from its digital storefront in an unprecedented move. Though CD Projekt Red representatives said in January the studio was working with Sony to get Cyberpunk 2077 reinstated on the PlayStation Store, February now draws to a close with no such event in sight. And if the latest Cyberpunk 2077-related news offers any indication, the wait for its return to PSN could last a while longer. CDPR postponed the title's next major patch, citing a ransomware hack the studio suffered as the reason.
Upon fielding questions from GQ Magazine about PlayStation's 2021 slate of exclusive releases, as well as the recent delay of Housemarque's Returnal, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan seemed to take a jab at the disastrous nature of Cyberpunk 2077's rollout. Ryan said Sony would rather postpone a project and ship it when the time's right, as opposed to maintaining a previously announced date "irrespective of [a product's] quality." While he didn't lambaste CDPR directly, GQ embedded a link to an article about Cyberpunk 2077's bugginess over Ryan's reference to "some fairly high-profile instances" of publishers launching games too hastily. The PlayStation CEO's full comment appears as follows:
"Yeah, we’re feeling pretty good about Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apartand Horizon Forbidden West. And, you know, there are two approaches to this: you can either hold the date and put out the game irrespective of quality or you can ship it when it’s right. We have always taken the latter approach. There have been some fairly high-profile instances of publishers trying the former approach."
In fairness, it's not clear whether Ryan's comments were meant as an implicit knock against CDPR. Cyberpunk 2077 arguably counts as the most high-profile example of a broken game in recent memory, however. Interestingly, even Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick seemed to recently condemn the RPG's disastrous release.
Generally speaking, Sony-published games have a good track record of either releasing in a polished state or straightening out the kinks fairly quickly. (If you ignore the abysmal launch of Horizon: Forbidden West should round out the slate in the second half of 2021.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S platforms.
Source: GQ Magazine
