Moogle11
Banned
Almost 60% of sales were on PC alone, I think they could have made it work.
I mean, look at the situation now, I think it is inarguable that taking that course of action would have worked better. Even if they “fix” the game on those platforms, the reputation hit to the game and the studio is unreal. It won‘t escape this.
They have to meet their promises to investors if they want to keep people investing in the future. Investors aren't going to be happy getting less than 100% of the profit margins they were promised, and many are pissed if their profits don't exceed the promise as investors tend to view those as a floor rather than ceiling of profit expectations.
It would be different if they were totally self funded and didn't seek out investors. Then they'd have the flexibility to decide to drop versions and lower profit margins to best achieve their vision. Once you open the doors to investors, get them to invest by promising certain sales and profit milestones your hamstrung as missing those will harm your ability to make those kind of cuts as investors can sue and certainly won't invest in future efforts.
So then your faced with dealing with that, or harming your reputation with customers if you put out subpar product on some platforms like they've done here. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
If CDPR is going to have lofty visions of doing huge scope games with high production values, they should probably just go back to being largely PC focused. Get their games out and running well on modern rigs and once they're done, look into downporting to consoles if they think it's worth it. And I say that as someone who failed to get into PC gaming and will likely never own another gaming PC. Just is what it is with these kind of games. If a dev's vision is taxing to even top level PC rigs, console versions are always going to be a challenge to get running adequately--much less if releasing at the same time.