CD Projekt RED promised a big patch for Cyberpunk 2077 in January and the studio properly delivered, with version 1.10 promising a series of bug fixes, stability improvements and – for PlayStation 4 at least – the promise of real performance updates. And this is crucial because we have absolutely no doubt that crashes can be rectified and faults removed, but the bottom line is this: state-of-the-art hardware has the power to deliver a consistent level of performance much closer to the desired 30fps ? The performance analysis of version 1.10 gives us optimism in some aspects, but there is still a mountain to climb.
Of course, version 1.10 has already been updated with patch 1.11, which essentially provides a hotfix update to fix some bugs, but the main thrust of optimization and stability introduced improvements in memory management and fixed a wide variety of bugs. What is curious is the platform-specific optimizations: there is talk of crowd optimization for PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5, but surely the basic PS4 should also improve? And why these optimizations would not improve the situation for Xbox One users either. In turn, the Microsoft platform has seen changes in memory management, specifically around character creation, mirrors, camera scanning and more.
Interestingly, however, our tests suggest that there are more improvements – and how is the PS4 and Xbox One vanilla that really needs a lot of work, these are the platforms we initially chose to take a look at. Something that we can report immediately: we did not see the game crash, crash or retreat to the front end. This is not to say that we have not found bugs and bugs – we definitely have – but cleaning up crash problems and providing a more stable experience is probably the number one goal on CD Projekt RED. Obviously, our tests are limited to a small area of the game, but we would consider this a significant step in the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 – the state of the game in terms of performance, stability and failures based on code 1.10 / 1.11.
Playing on the standard PlayStation 4, we also noticed some improvements that don’t seem to have been revealed in the patch notes. First, the image quality seems to have improved markedly. Even with the compressed video you’ll see on this page, the increased clarity here should be evident – perhaps the CDPR has adjusted the renderer’s temporal anti-aliasing component, adjusted the post-TAA sharpness, or decreased the intensity of the post-processing pipeline . Regardless, it looks cleaner. Getting a lock on the native resolution in this game is a challenge due to how quickly the pixel count changes, but our impression is that the actual rendering resolution has remained unchanged since the launch code – Cyberpunk 2077 looks cleaner.
In selected scenarios, we also noticed an improved performance on PS4 – anything up to five or six frames per second, which is a feat, a significant jump in percentage terms. Interestingly, we saw this happening in scenarios like the vehicle shooters with scavengers after the first mission – where the optimization of the CDPR’s declared crowd system probably didn’t have any impact. Again, the image quality remains clearer and the effect set remains the same, so this is genuine progress. But it is clear that we are still far from a pleasant experience. Other areas of the game work basically the same as before, and performance issues remain. In frantic shootings, it is still possible for Cyberpunk 2077 to drop below 20fps on PlayStation 4, while streaming-related issues are still present. It is still very difficult to recommend this game to users of the most popular console of the last generation.
Where does version 1.10 come out of the Xbox One S? Well, it looks like the improvement in image clarity seen on PlayStation 4 applies to the vanilla Xbox One as well, but aside from the improvements in overall stability, all of our test clips did not reveal any noticeable increase in performance compared to the 1.02 patch. The often prolonged locks are gone, improvements in stability are also present, but the real way the game unfolds remains as unsatisfactory as before. It was also on the Xbox that I experienced a particularly important flaw – and an issue I would like to see how the CDPR address is the way in which playing on one type of Xbox can affect the experience if you switch to another. For example, if you play in the X Series in quality mode, when switching to Xbox One or Xbox One X, frame rates drop to around 15 fps. This can only be fully resolved by clearing all saved games from the affected Xboxes. I will let you watch the video to see some of the other weird bugs and weird flaws I found on both platforms.
Our overview of all the latest generation versions of Cyberpunk 2077, running on code 1.04 – and not very well on any platform.
Similar to our work on The Witcher 3, we intend to map the progress of the various patches and updates for Cyberpunk 2077 over time, so, having completed work on the basic machines, our gaze moves to the enhanced consoles. In our initial tests, the PS4 Pro – although it still has serious problems in some scenarios – seemed to be the group’s choice when it came to playing on state-of-the-art systems. However, impressions so far suggest that, in addition to stability improvements, it is still the same general experience – our test cases involving crowds (an area chosen by CDPR as the focus for the 1.10 optimization work) have shown inconclusive results and certainly no revolutionary improvement.
Ultimately, our learning of Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.10 – and indeed 1.11 – is pretty straightforward. Steps have been taken to eliminate game crashes and to improve overall stability – the kind of fundamental improvement that should take precedence, but although there are some improvements to the way the game works (on the basic PS4, at least), it does not answer the questions that we had when we saw the first demo: is it really possible to run this smoothly on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One? On the PS4 side, there is a feeling that some genuine improvements have been made – but at the same time, if there were fundamental optimizations here, I would expect to see some kind of improvement on the Pro side as well.
Based on the previous PR, CDPR’s plan is to deliver another major patch in February, so we will report on that when the update arrives.