Cyberpunk PC
CDPRIt’s time again for a round of investor calls, and unsurprisingly, CDPR was met with a familiar question during theirs. When is Cyberpunk 2077 going to be allowed back on the PlayStation store by Sony, where it’s been banned for nearly six months now?
This time, it was Adam Kiciński who answered the question, and despite how long it’s been, relayed that they have exactly no new information about the situation:
“Unfortunately, I have no new information in this regard,” he said. “We are still in discussions and with every patch the game gets better and there is a visible progress, but as we said the decision is an exclusive decision of Sony, so we are waiting for the information about the fact that they took the decision to bring back this game. Until then I am not able to tell you anything more.”
This is a bit of a different tone than Kiciński saying they had “friendly relations” with Sony back in April, and previous answers to this question have said that it would be “closer than further” after the game has been patched multiple times. But nothing has changed.
The Sony issue is significant for CDPR, given that 1) digital sales are usually over half of all sales for big games these days, 2) there are 115 million PS4s in the wild and 3) the PS5 is the fastest-selling console in history. Cyberpunk rapidly sold 13 million copies in December, but the pace has dramatically dropped since, which CDPR blames on the narrative surrounding the game’s release (ie. its loads of problems) and its removal from the PlayStation store. The removal both literally limits sales of the game, but also sends a broader signal that the game was so broken, that Sony took the step of refusing to sell it entirely, which CDPR believes even hurt sales on other platforms.
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PS Store
SonyIt remains unclear to everyone, especially CDPR, why Sony has still refused to list the game after all this time and a number of larger patches. The game will never run well on base-level PS4s, that much is clear, but Microsoft never removed Cyberpunk from its store, and it arguably runs the worst on base level Xboxes. What magic line does CDPR have to cross for Cyberpunk to be restored?
The growing thought is that…maybe there isn’t one. The longer this goes and the less new patches can even do to fix the game, the theory is that perhaps Sony is simply waiting for the PS5 version of the game to be released later this year. It will sell that one, but it may never put the old PS4 one back online. Currently there are two versions of the game, the base PS4 one and the PS4 Pro version that runs on both Pros and PS5s. But they’re all rolled into one listing, and the removal covers them all. A dedicated PS5 version would be entirely separate.
It’s a weird situation all around. Cyberpunk 2077 was a mess at launch, particularly on last gen consoles, and they put Sony in a bad position, telling people to ask for refunds on digital copies, which was a policy Sony didn’t even have.
And yet banishing the game from the store for six months after it’s been patched multiple times seems perhaps…overly punitive. The Sony removal was unprecedented by itself, but I don’t think anyone believed this would go on this long. Here in May, with a PS5/Xbox Series X next-gen version expected a few more months from now, it does seem like that may be the answer, and this game may simply never be sold in PS4 form again on the PlayStation Store.
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The Link LonkMay 26, 2021 at 07:19PM
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CDPR Reaffirms They Have No Idea When Sony Will Lift ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Store Ban - Forbes
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