Mostly because Skyrim was still delivering a novel gaming experience of being able to explore for 100s to 1000s of hours without repetition. Despite the bugs it was first to market in an era where WoW and multiplayer was the premiere gaming experience. By the time Cyberpunk hit shelves the format was old news in the sense that we already had “open world explore this map for your entire jaded teenage years” maps for genres from viking to western to future dystopia.
Aside: There is a reason HBO could only reboot Westworld in 2016 and the concept was already stale again by 2018, it would have been unthinkably dumb to try it in, say, 2006.
Maybe without Fallout 4, Half-life 2±, Bioshock 3, and so on, the future dystopia thirst would have won out, but when you put all these options on the same steam library which one do people want to spend their time in?
I’m currently loving a bunch of games in the factory building genre so can I offer you some Dyson Sphere Program in these trying times?
Imagine factorio but you’re in a mecha suit building factories spanning multiple planets eventually multiple stars, to build exponentially more complex resources until you’re able to shoot swarms of dyson reflectors and eventually build a rigid sphere in orbit.
Still in Alpha after several years, but exquisitely polished, runs fine on legacy machines, excellent responsive dev team, combat is being added soon.