A warning about ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on PS4 and Xbox One

Technically, Cyberpunk 2077 is a next-gen game. The console version sold today was designed for the latest generation of hardware, and CDPR promises a free upgrade to a next-generation “optimized” version at some unspecified time in 2021.

And yet, playing Cyberpunk 2077 on next-gen consoles … might not be recommended for many, given the issues players face with the base models of the Xbox One and PS4 especially.

While it’s true that Xbox One and PS4 are seven-year-old consoles right now, Cyberpunk sells for those platforms, and even if a percentage of the estimated 113 million PS4 and ~ 50+ million Xbox Ones could be the PS4 Pro improved and One X, the vast majority are still the originals. And with the next-gen PS5 and Series X / S consoles being A) insanely expensive and B) almost impossible to find, a ton of Cyberpunk console players be be in those old units.

And things are … a little difficult, let’s say.

The last day or so brought in viral footage of the game running on base consoles which is one of the most hilariously bad performances I’ve seen in an AAA game:

While many of these folks didn’t have the day one patch, even if they did, there’s no guarantee these kinds of graphical issues will be resolved, with some reporting that the patch hasn’t even been available yet.

While PS4 Pro seems to offer some improvements over the base PS4, I wouldn’t say it looks particularly good either:

It’s really only when you hit Xbox One X that things start to look more visually acceptable, although the One X dramatically outperforms all of those other consoles in terms of power:

But the most viral images and screenshots are on base models, and from what I can tell, the conversation about the game on launch day on social media is mostly overwhelming:

Cyberpunk 2077’s main platform is likely to be PC, where the game broke a record for concurrent player count on Steam last night for a single-player game. All Cyberpunk reviews from critics are based on the PC version of the game where the game looks better, but even if the game achieved high scores, frequent bugs and glitches were frequently mentioned as negative.

Obviously, I understand the desire to play Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, but if you have an older console especially, you might want to consider waiting until CDPR releases a patch or four before heading to improve performance. With a main campaign of around 15-20 hours (and dozens more secondary things to do afterwards), you may not want your first match to be tarnished by this level of problems. It’s unclear how long it will take to improve performance on all the different platforms, but there will obviously be massive incoming patches as they try to rectify how “hot” this game got after three delays, trying to slide in before the holiday season. And it worked, they had 8 million pre-orders for the game, which is close to the GTA V numbers.

While Cyberpunk the game may be fine, you should know what you’re getting into if you jump in on day one. Your experience could be better or worse than what you see here, but don’t be surprised if it’s not the sci-fi dreamland you saw at E3 or in the preview images. There is much work to be done.

Follow me On twitter, Youtube Y Instagram. Pick up my science fiction novels Herokiller Y Herokiller 2and read my first series The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also in audio book.