Follow-up: Cyberpunk 2077 received its third delay a couple days ago, pushing its launch date back to December 10. CDPR said the delay was due to difficulties in launching the game across nine different platforms, including PC, the Xbox One/PS4, and their next-gen counterparts. Today, though, during an investors call, CDPR revealed that it's really just one set of platforms causing issues: current-gen consoles.
Disgruntled PC gamers have long maintained that aging console hardware is holding back the gaming industry, but the truth has always been much more complicated. After all, without the massive audience that consoles have gathered over the years, developers wouldn't bother making expansive AAA games at all – there wouldn't be enough profit.
With that said, it does seem like the final stretch of Cyberpunk 2077's troubled development is a rare example of a situation where that anti-console rhetoric is actually accurate, to an extent, anyway.
According to CD Projekt (CDPR's parent company) CEO Adam Kiciński, the game would've been good to go on November 19 for PC and next-gen consoles. However, optimizing it for current-gen platforms is proving much more difficult than the team anticipated.
The following excerpt from Kiciński's opening statement during the call summarizes the situation nicely:
The game is ready for the PC and runs great on the next-gen consoles, and could be shipped on the scheduled date on those platforms. However, even though the game has been certified on the current gens by both Sony and Microsoft, some very final optimization processes for such a massive and complex game require a bit of additional time.
Answering a caller's question, Kiciński goes on to claim that releasing the game on all platforms on the 19th "was possible," but the extra three weeks of development will allow Cyberpunk 2077's developers to "get more things ready" to their satisfaction.
We have absolutely no idea what CDPR's optimization process will entail for Xbox One and PS4 owners. Will content be cut? Will the graphics be significantly tapered back? Will loading screens be introduced, after all?
At this stage, we simply can't say. However, none of us will have to wait long to find out. Cyberpunk 2077 is still only a few short weeks away, and reviews for all versions of the game will likely be going up a week (or so) before release.