I've learnt that (initial) success of a sequel is 95% because of its prequel. True performance may be seen if it has another sequel, or DLC, or heck, another 3 months.

That's the benefit about continual updating games. By the time CS3 is ready people won't remember CS2 2023 but whatever 3-6 years of updates does to CS2. For a modern example: who's still complaining about Cyberpunk in 2023?

It's not like Sonic 2006 that is forever broken, sold decently at launch and then cratered the series for the next decade to come.

> For a modern example: who's still complaining about Cyberpunk in 2023?

Those who bought it and played it in 1.0! Many of them never saw the fixed game. They weren’t helped at all by the fact that the game was quite good 6 months later. Worst case they’ll never buy a CDPR game again, best case they’ll buy the games after 6 months (which by the logic of rushing releases is disaster because apparently not selling millions the first holiday season is a failure).

There's still a risk of the game cratering completely like Imperator, although it's not a sequel to an established title. Sometimes I'm still worried how Victoria 3 's fate would be.

That’s still not a sufficient condition for success. Longer term the studio brand will be hurt, not least.

> In the end, the problem is capitalism.

Is this sarcasm? I’m asking seriously. If not, then how is a poorly running game the result of capitalism, and what is the alternative economic model that would produce only high-performance / efficient games?

I don't think it's sarcastic. The game runs poorly because it needed more time for optimizations. It doesn't get more time for optimiztions because the publisher said it needed to ship now. The publisher can say that it needs to ship because they can advertise for good launch sales, because the a large portion of the customer base will buy it at launch as long as there aren't obvious showstoppers.

It's a bit trite to sum that down to "capitalism", but sure. it's the underlying societal buzzword issue

Corner cutting doesn't happen in socialist countries?

In a truly socialist structure, corner cutting comes from prioritizing other duties to the people, directly or indirectly. Capitalistic pressures come from money.

But there is no pure capitalistic structure nor socialist one. I did already mention it was a trite comparison.

>In a truly socialist structure, corner cutting comes from prioritizing other duties to the people, directly or indirectly. Capitalistic pressures come from money.

You can argue that's the same under capitalism, just replace "the people" with "customers". In both cases corner cutting is only an issue if there's deception involved, wether that's a Party member using lower quality materials for a construction project, or a video game company spending less time polishing a game. I don't see a problem with releasing unfinished/poorly optimized games as long as it's clearly disclosed. Early releases are basically this.

> In the end, the problem is capitalism.

surely, it is the underlying economic system ruining the art of modern video game development!

The problem is European capitalism, as the game developer here is Finnish and publisher is Swedish. Important clarification since you seem very invested in calling out the US in every other post of yours, so I'm sure you appreciate the calling out of systemic European failures here.

The Soviet Union produced some of the best video games!!