Cyberclunk? Cyberpunk 2077 Fails to Impress on Consoles

After seven long years of anticipation, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out, and so far we’ve had the opportunity to benchmark it on PC and play it on Stadia. Our impressions of the game’s performance have been generally positive so far, but these aren’t the only platforms the game is on. The game’s PS4 and Xbox One versions are also out today, but aside from two short gameplay videos, developer CD Projekt Red hadn’t given press any access to the game on console. Now that the game’s officially launched, though, we’re starting to see reports hit social media from all over, and the results are concerning. 

Until now, all we had seen of Cyberpunk's console versions were a few sequences of pre-recorded gameplay running on the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, Xbox Series X and PS5. The version in these videos was technically built for current-gen consoles, with a proper next-gen update slated for next year, though the base versions of the PS4 and Xbox One were mysteriously absent from these videos. If reports starting to come out from players are to be believed, though, we might now know why. 

Videos are starting to hit Twitter that show the game running on the base PS4 and Xbox One, and they’re filled with muddy textures, flat surfaces, heavy pixelization, crashes and plenty of unreactive or buggy AI.
 

We’ve also seen complaints that the game runs in 720p on the base PS4 and Xbox One, with frequent dips below 30fps.

There’s a caveat to some of these user complaints, however. While Cyberpunk 2077 launched on December 10th in the US, we first started seeing footage of the game running on base consoles hit American social media on December 9th, which means that the users behind those posts may have adjusted their time zones to access it early. This means that some of them might not have been playing with Cyberpunk’s supposedly extensive day-one patch. While CD Projekt Red ensures that the game should automatically have the patch applied if you preloaded it, Ethan Gach of Kotaku said that when he attempted to play Cyberpunk early by adjusting his time zone, his copy was stuck on a pre-patch version with no option to download updates. This persisted even after re-downloading the game from scratch.

But certain post-patch members of the press are having a bad time, too. Speaking to Eurogamer, Tom Morgan of Digital Foundry said “Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 looks very blurry, running between 720p and 900p resolution, and the framerate for any driving around the big city areas is constantly at around 20 [fps].”

He also said that he experienced frequent hiccups and texture pop-in issues. Most of these issues went away by playing on the PS5, despite the console version out now being branded for current-gen consoles, but Morgan said that glitches like T-posing persisted.

Because of these issues, and because CD Projekt Red did not provide us a console copy of the game, we here at Tom’s Hardware haven't yet tried it. However, Tom’s Hardware freelance contributor Kieth Mitchell told us that he also experienced “low frame rate and resolution” on his base PS4, though these issues went away when playing on the PS4 Pro.

To be fair to Cyberpunk 2077, this is a 2020 game running on 2013 hardware, which some of the game’s fans have pointed out on social media. Others, however, are posting counterexamples of similar high-fidelity recent open world games that run much more smoothly on base current generation consoles.

Regardless, what we can say is that while the versions being sold for console right now are branded for the PS4 and the Xbox One, it might not be worth buying them unless you have a PS5 or Xbox Series X. For now, at least.