Cyberpunk 2077 1.2 patch arrived last week, accompanied by an absolutely gigantic list of bug fixes, tweaks and updates. Dedicated players should see the game-breaking bugs resolved, but, fundamentally, has the game been fixed on consoles? Can we now recommend buying the title on state-of-the-art systems? To get to the point, there is good news for PlayStation 4 Pro owners, but in terms of performance and stability, there is still a long, long way to go.
What the patch notes do not explain in great detail is any specific effort to optimize the experience for PS4 and Xbox One console generation, although there is a long list of engine-specific optimizations that should, in theory, improve the experience for everyone Commercial. There are also promised improvements to the controversial temporal anti-aliasing solution, in addition to improved screen space reflections. The Xbox One was also chosen for memory management optimizations – but it was the streaming optimizations that caught our attention, as it appears to be the key to dramatic improvements to the title on the PlayStation 4 Pro.
It’s all about streaming technology in the background – the way assets like geometry and textures are brought in from storage, unpacked and rendered on the screen. We saw the change deployed on the PS4, PS4 Pro and Xbox One, but interestingly, the Xbox One X doesn’t seem to have changed much since version 1.1. Simply put, there is a feeling that streaming may be performed at a lower priority than before, aiming at improvements in the frame rate at the expense of detail resolution. Environmental assets take longer to load, pop-in now more of a problem than it was previously. You could say that there are streaming delays, but details he does eventually render over time. However, in dense parts of the city, while you are driving fast, some aspects of the environment now stop being loaded before they pass you.
Digital Foundry tests all high-end console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.2.
You can see in the video how it affects the overall presentation, especially on the PlayStation 4 Pro, but the result is that there are clear performance benefits. Sony’s enhanced console has always played the game better, beating even the most powerful Xbox One X. Now it’s even better, spending a lot of time reaching its goal of 30 frames per second. Running through a crowded market, the frame-rate can reach the minimum and mid-1920s on PS4 Pro. With the new patch installed, the game ran at almost 30fps flawlessly – albeit with the reduction (or rather, the delay ) in detail that I already talked about. Sometimes, in similar scenarios – like a quick run through the market – performance improves by up to 8fps for Pro in patch 1.2, a notable update to a 30fps title. It is simpler and, although it may require a visual sacrifice to get there, I would say it is worth it for the absolute gameplay. Pop-in occurs in fast-moving scenes anyway and, speaking in a practical way, it is common for it to pass quickly like a blur.
I think the most notable of the tests is to see the infamous shooting in the alley at stake. This is a stress test I planned when the game was released – on the way to Ripperdoc, we drove through Night City, and then, instead of parking in the designated spot, we essentially got into a murderous mess. The combination of combat, multiple NPCs and dense city details makes performance drop across all systems – and still happens on PS4 Pro, but clearly still improved over version 1.1. There are still some problems – in later screams against the Maelstromers, my console started to double a lot in the 1920s, before I experienced a total crash on the panel. So there is clearly still a lot of room for improvement and despite the big gains on the PS4 Pro in terms of frame-rate, it is difficult to let the game go through patch 1.2 when crashing is still a problem.
We ran the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 on a system based on an Xbox One processor and the results were fascinating.
The Xbox One X, by comparison, still has major problems. There are some improvements in performance, the market now operates in the mid-1920s, rather than in adolescence, while the initial entry into Night City after the first mission has also been improved. The problem is that many of the legacy problems persist: the Xbox One X continues to suffer from problems – major game disruptions – causing large deviations to 0 fps. It is momentary, but it is still a more frequent problem on Xbox One machines. Unlike PS4 consoles, I did not experience crashes in my tests. Overall, the improvement of the One X is less impressive and you can still see performance drop below 20fps by simply traversing dense environments at speed – an area where the PS4 Pro sees dramatic improvements. The combat stress test in the alley seems to work just as badly as in version 1.1. Overall, there are improvements, but it doesn’t perform nearly as well as the PS4 Pro – a strange situation.
In terms of the PS4 and Xbox One vanilla, they’ve worked consistently poorly with patch 1.1 and, although the new patch makes some scenes a little better, a 2 fps to 3 fps advantage makes little chance when you’re still so far from the target 30 fps. Interestingly, the PS4 shows nothing like the same level improvement shown by the Pro – it’s still a great 20-30fps shooting experience (or worse) complete with problems and falls. It is a struggle to even aim correctly with this issue during any shooting. I also experienced a flaw in the system menu on Ps4 – as well as on Pro. PS4 is still a bad experience overall: the crash is still there and the basic performance is still far from the target.
Here’s what Digital Foundry did with Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.1 in January.
Meanwhile, Xbox One is still extremely difficult to recommend. Streaming optimizations have been included, based on identical traversal images comparing patch 1.1 to 1.2, but the performance gains are small, at best – and too small to be recorded in most scenes, where frame rates exhibit only a margin of difference of error. Where you really need a good, consistent level of performance, Xbox One continues to disappoint and perhaps inevitably remains the worst-performing version of Cyberpunk there is.
Ultimately, there is good and bad news here. The PlayStation 4 Pro is not bad. Accepting that a game clearly and obviously designed for the next generation of hardware will have difficulties on high-end machines, the notion of playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 30fps for much of the experience suggests that getting the game in shape on legacy hardware is not entirely impossible. Based on that, I will be fascinated to see how it improves the situation of the PlayStation 5, which runs on the same code base. With that said, the fact that the PS4 and Pro crashed on the system menus within two hours of play is a pretty brutal reminder that a lot of work is still needed in this game.
And this is a sentiment that applies even more to PS4, Xbox One and Xbox One X. Four months after launch, it appears that only a few steps have been taken to improve the game’s core performance in those three. Based on the patch notes, it appears that bug fixes took priority – and rightly so – but I hope CDPR will continue to push for optimization. What we are seeing in patch 1.2 is progress, but it is strange that in my tests, only the PS4 Pro has seen improvements across the board. Fingers crossed so that it extends to all systems when the next big patch arrives.