The founder of CDPR explains the problems of Cyberpunk 2077 and presents the game update plan. Next-gen version of the game in the second half of the year

Cyberpunk 2077 – update plan

For those who can’t wait to fix it – good news. Two major updates for CP2077 are priority – and those with patch 1.1 and 1.2 are prioritized, coming first. Let’s hope that these are the novelties that will bring the game to a usable condition on old equipment, so that you can fully enjoy the free DLC and the update adapting the game to the new generation consoles. As plan update, it is a pity that there is no place here for any specific dates. Well, at most one yellow board will be covered by another ;-).

Cyberpunk 2077: what went wrong? The creators officially about the problems with the game

I am very pleased with the commitment to quality that the founder of CD Projekt Red assures. It is also glad that it does not (or at least: not completely) blame everyone around. I was extremely amused by the explanation of why the game on the old generation consoles works the way it works – not in the context of what Iwiński tells about. Because I understand that when you created the most beautiful PC version possible and wanted to port it later, this task was difficult. However, I still remember all the promotional materials of the game for PS4 and Xbox One, blindly picked up prizes from the fair (with the presentation of its much more beautiful, PC version) for the best console games and … well, it’s hard for me to take such a translation seriously. On the said website a video-based FAQ based on the answers also appeared:

Where did such a huge difference come from in the versions for PC and consoles of the old generation?

Cyberpunk 2077 is a huge project that includes a lot of specially prepared objects, interdependent systems and mechanics. In this game, all of this is not scattered over flat terrain where we could lighten the gear a bit, but concentrated in an area of ​​a large city where the loading screen hardly appears. That was a challenge in itself, but we made our work even more difficult to make sure that the game looks stunning on PC, and then adapt it to consoles – especially the old generation ones. This was our main assumption. At first, it did not seem particularly difficult. We knew the hardware capabilities vary, but I think time has shown how much we underestimated the challenge.

What made creating a console game so difficult?

The main challenge was the constant need to improve our data streaming system for older consoles. Streaming is responsible for “feeding” the engine both what is visible on the screen and the game mechanics themselves. The city is densely packed with content, and the bandwidth of old-gen consoles is what it is, so we kept having trouble with that.

Haven’t you tested the game on old generation consoles to make sure it provides a good experience?

We tested. But it turns out that our testing did not reveal many of the bugs that players encountered during the game. As we approached the premiere, we saw a significant improvement every day and we truly believed that the premiere update would do the trick.

Why the time difference in the reviews of the PC and console games?

We started sending out the keys to the PC review versions in the first week of December. On release date, December 10th, we had a really good start with the PC version reviews, and while it wasn’t perfect, it’s a version of the game we’re very proud of. At the same time as we sent the review codes for the PC version, we were still working hard to improve the quality of the game on old-gen consoles. Each additional day of work on the premiere update brought visible results. That is why we started sending the keys to the review version to consoles only on December 8, which is later than we initially assumed.