You have to ask? Its holiday season in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide being on lockdown, or some form of lockdown, with absolutely jack shit to do other than work from home (if you even can), learn something (most people will not do this), or play video games.
New movies and television have been woefully shitty.
Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage
They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.
As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.
You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well.
Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.
They estimate February, but honestly I'm thinking it'll be never.
The sad simple truth is that this game was never designed with current gen consoles in mind. It was always designed for PCs. When the now-current gen consoles were announced and specs got tossed around, CDPR realized they were basically mid-tier gaming PCs, so they would run the game fairly well.
I'll reserve final judgement for when the PS5 version comes out, but aside from 60FPS, the current build looks like crap on PS5. It runs sub 1080p most of the time, lighting and shadows are horrific, it's technically speaking the worst looking PS4 game I've played, including on an actual PS4.
Visually in terms of atmosphere it looks great, if you can see through the low resolution and terrible LOD. I believe they can and will fix these things; what I'm not confident will ever be fixed though, is the AI/game logic, it seems like it just hasn't been written/implemented at anything more than the most basic placeholder.
In theory it's using DRS (Dynamic Resolution Scaling) but I've never seen it change to a "good" resolution.
The 1.04 patch improved things but many textures are extremely poor while others right next to them are sharp and clear. For example, a building or railing texture will be good, but a dumpster or any other object which isn't fixed will be extremely low resolution. On the whole it's very soft and just gives a "blurry" or "out of focus" feel.
The result for me is eye strain as it feels like I'm always trying to focus on something that won't be focused.
Subjectively speaking, it _feels_ worse quality than a 1080p game when I was playing on PS4. I don't have any real evidence to back it up though.
I played a few hours on PS5 and have parked it until the PS5 version comes out. The game logic/features are a far cry from what was advertised; I've waited 7-8 years for this game and the disappointment is immeasurable. I don't believe they can fix the short-coming by Jan/Feb (As a software Engineer myself I just don't see how they can implement/fix so much missing logic in that short of a time frame).
I'm holding out for the PS5 patch so that at least I can play what _is_ there at a decent resolution. The game looks nice, that and the story is pretty much all it has going for it (in my opinion). The PS4 build is running at such a low resolution (60FPS though) with terrible lighting and shadows on PS5 right now that it's embarrassing. That's once you get past the 10+ times the game has totally crashed out on my since the 1.04 update.
I want to enjoy the game and right now I can't. Let's see how it fairs in a couple of months.
If you want a feel for how it'll play for your giftee on PS4/Pro (at the current patch level) check out Digital Foundry's reviews on YouTube.
"Easier for ask for forgiveness than permission": perhaps, but it's not obvious to me.
One the one hand, a further delay risks losing out a big part of sales. Dedicated fans will buy anyway, but presumably a large fraction of preorders came from people who just jumped on the hype. And who knows if you can recreate this hype after the pandemic ends, after other games come out, after you delay the release over and over. And yes, you can fix some of the damage later.
On the other hand, the company had an incredible reputation for quality, maybe one of the best in the industry. How much of the lost reputation will not be recovered, even after all the refunds and patches? Future games will get less preorders, so less cashflow, so more dependence on external funding - an extra source of risks and tension. Future games will not get as much hype, so will sell less. Even hiring might suffer as the best candidates are quite sensitive to the employer reputation.
Anyone that's truly on the fence already knows what to do, they've seen it happen with all three Witcher games. Wait two years, then buy them for $40, or wait for a GOG sale and get the Game of the Year Edition for $20.
I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 because I like this setting much more than the setting of The Witcher. Don't regret it.
This kind of ruins one of the selling points of consoles - that the game that you buy for them just work. They're more expensive than PC ones, but there experience is disappointment and frustration free. Looks like it's not so anymore.
New movies and television have been woefully shitty.
Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage
They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.