Cyberpunk 2077 between old and new generation consoles
But let's proceed in order. On December 10, following numerous postponements, Cyberpunk 2077 was made available for PC, streaming services, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a version for Xbox Series S | X and PlayStation 5 expected in the course of 2021. The first reviews , carried out only on the PC platform, have described an ambitious, futuristic, technically impressive, long-lived and fun production, even if not without imperfections, and bugs, for which the same CD Projekt RED has worked in the release of two patches, before of the title's release, capable of correcting most of it. A promising overview and similar to the expectations placed on Cyberpunk 2077.
A different speech, however, must be made for the console version of Cyberpunk 2077, where an obvious, and necessary, graphic downgrade, mixes with the aforementioned bugs and the need to run on seven different platforms, offering a framework definitely less heavenly. The title in fact, precisely in the face of the need to run on such a wide range of gaming machines, presented itself to the public with a series of technical imperfections which, in most cases, have generated a strong disappointment in the players. To give you a practical example, the following list brings together all the results achieved by Cyberpunk 2077, in terms of frames per second, on the various consoles currently available, before the release of Update 1.03:
Playstation 4: 20 / 25 fps (with sporadic dips to 15 fps) PlayStation 4 PRO: 25/30 fps PlayStation 5: 55/60 fps Xbox One / One S: 20/25 fps (with sporadic dips to 18 fps) Xbox One X: 28 / 30 fps Xbox Series S | X: 58/60 fps (30 fps in Graphics Mode) An evident performance gap that combined with an anti-aliasing, more or less, marked according to the console in which you decide to use Cyberpunk 2077, the bugs we mentioned earlier, sporadic application crashes and a graphic downgrade imposed by the need to run on 2013 hardware, have created a discontent in the community of players who, in addition to having a specific update released to CD Projekt RED to stabilize the performances on the various consoles, he started to generate ment the users a question: did it really make sense to publish Cyberpunk 2077 on the previous generation platforms?
A question that eight million pre-orders, made over the last few years, answer for us. Undoubtedly CD Projekt RED could not fail to keep a promise of this magnitude, just as it would have made no sense not to release, between the two current generations of consoles, a project announced in, far away, May 2012. Furthermore, we are not talking absolutely about a qualitatively poor production. Cyberpunk 2077, net of an optimization process already underway by the developers, is a futuristic, profound, fun and, in some ways, revolutionary production regardless of the gaming platform in which you decide to use it.
This episode, however, shows us how the videogame landscape is evolving more and more rapidly than in the past and how, nowadays, the announcement of such an important production, and with such high objectives, must keep account of a constantly changing market. 2012 was the last year where PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 dominated the console market and the following summer would see users concentrated on the new gaming machines which, theoretically, should have defined the hardware on which the " living room gamers ”would have to spend the next seven years. Instead, as we all know, the story turned out to be different and with the advent of 4K, the bottleneck shown by the consoles released in 2013 and a constantly evolving landscape, we have witnessed the release of mid-gen consoles which, in addition to offering more performing technical specifications, they forced the developers to work on a greater number of different machines, guaranteeing additional features for the most recent consoles and stable performance for those previously released.
Adding the recent news stories that made this 2020 a year, undoubtedly, peculiar and the consequent delays of every project, videogame or not, we arrive at the current situation where the release of Cyberpunk 2077 falls close to a new generation of consoles, presenting itself as a game made for the previous generation of gaming machines. This important factor has led the developers to have to make the title usable on seven different consoles, rethinking, practically in real time, their marketing campaign (remember the partnership with Microsoft last June) to try not to present themselves on the "less hardcore" market. with a product that could be mistakenly considered old by a casual user who is faced with a packaging that has the words PS4 and Xbox One.
This series of unfortunate events therefore brings us to the situation current, where between performance modes and graphics, dancers fram rates, graphic downgrades and various compromises made by developers to keep their promises, the words “Plays Great Also On Xbox Series X | S and PS5 ″ tends to lose its original meaning, given how the performance guaranteed by the excellent backward compatibility of the three new gaming machines, make these versions of Cyberpunk 2077 the best of the current console landscape. But can we blame CD Projekt RED for this? Actually no. The reality is that the developers have released the game on the platforms for which it was originally announced, in a very complex historical context for projects of this magnitude, and are actively working to correct all the imperfections of this first release of Cyberpunk 2077. A scenario that, willingly or sadly, we are observing for every major release of the videogame panorama that, between postponements, waits and last-minute corrections, is increasingly subject to the laws of a market that, at the same time, allows it to create works of this scope.
This whole situation, however, should make us reflect on an important factor: as far as we all know the importance that pre-orders, and marketing in general, cover in the videogame sector, it really makes sense announce the platforms on which a project will be released so far in advance? In these cases, the very famous cases of The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy Versus XIII always come to mind, which with Cyberpunk 2077 share a very similar path: they are all ambitious productions, which require work paths. long, full of unforeseen events that could compromise the original roadmap, modifying it even permanently… does it still make sense, in such a frenetic market, to get out of balance with exit dates and platforms with so much time in front of it before reaching the finish line? Or maybe it would be better to just say that a certain game will be released, generically, on PlayStation, Xbox and PC, thus avoiding creating situations of this kind?
We leave the answer to you in the comments, reassuring you that Cyberpunk 2077, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is receiving constant support from CD Projekt RED to keep its performance stable.
