I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation 5 —via PS4 backwards compatibility — and the game runs…ok. But for the massive fanbase that is still on PS4 and Xbox One? They are indeed getting the short shrift with a port that runs at an abysmal frame rate and is riddled with muddy textures that take ages to load.
That, and it’s also a disservice to gamers that went for upgraded consoles just to get a slight frames and performance bump as they wait for the next gen Cyberpunk 2077 update to drop.
IGN’s review of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports of the game puts it nicely:
“It fails to hit even the lowest bar of technical quality one should expect even when playing on lower-end hardware.”
Whatever the performance of those versions of Cyberpunk were, it was delayed to make sure it launched on a customer base that accounted for 60% of their sales in the UK.
It’s understandable that CD Projekt Red wouldn’t want to walk away from such a massive audience built up over the past 7 years; the PS4 has found a place under more than 100 million TVs since it dropped in 2013.
Still, CDPR stayed away from showing Cyberpunk on PS4 and Xbox One as long as they could and, it’s sad to say, but it’s obvious they knew all along and still went ahead and released a busted port. Enough to decide that they would put their platform partners on the spot and have them refund the price of the game:
CDPR has been on damage control ever since Cyberpunk 2077 was released in the wild for PS4 and Xbox One and today have doubled down on putting Sony and Microsoft in the precarious position to enforce their refund policies instead of CDPR taking full responsibility.
It’s not so simple to get a refund from Sony or Microsoft’s online stores.
A decision to have cancelled the game on PS4 and Xbox One wouldn’t have been a easy one. Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development since 2013 after all — the year PS4 launched and a successor years away. But it would’ve been the right decision. Now, gamers on those consoles have a bitter taste in their mouth towards CD Projekt Red for a game that instead could’ve ushered in next generation consoles with a bang.
An argument could be made that only those lucky enough to land a PS5 and Xbox Series X this holiday season would get to experience it so it’s right that old gen at least has it, but…like that scene in that other Keanu Reeves-helmed classic says:
We Got Comms! 