A dedicated Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox Series X upgrade is on the way, but there’s no guarantee it will be released in 2021.
Cyberpunk 2077 has had what you could call a rocky start to its life cycle. Having been touted as one of the most anticipated and hyped games of the past decade, the game was met with mixed reviews, many bemoaning the game’s technical and performance issues.
On PC, the game was at its optimal level, but on console, namely Xbox One and PS4, the experience was bordering on unplayable at launch. On Xbox Series X the situation was a little more complicated: the game ran relatively well, but it was merely playing the Xbox One version, and so from a technical and graphical perspective there was nothing especially impressive about the game world.
That said, Cyberpunk 2077 does a lot of things great, and there’s been a lot of hype and excitement for the game’s official Xbox Series X version, an offering of the game that is fully optimised and essentially built from the ground up for the console.
However, as developer, CD Projekt RED, continues to refine and improve the state of the current version of the game — the most recent update being evidence of this — it appears as though the Xbox Series X version of Cyberpunk 2077 is still some way off.
Speaking during a recent H1 earnings call, business development manager at CD Projekt RED, Michael Nowakowski, said that the studio simply couldn’t commit to the Xbox Series X version seeing a release this year.
“The target is to release the next-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077 late this year,” he said. “At the same time, keeping in mind the lessons we have learned during the past year and taking into account that this project still remains in development, we can’t say with full certainty that the production schedule will not change.”
That is more or less saying that, given the fiasco that was Cyberpunk 2077‘s release on Xbox One, they may well be working to spend as much time as possible on the Series X version, and may not even announce a firm release date until the game is fully ready to launch.
The good news is that if you own a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 on Xbox One, you won’t need to rush out to buy another copy.
CPR has been pretty clear in that the refined Series X version of Cyberpunk 2077 will be merely a free “upgrade”, so if you purchase the Xbox One version, you won’t actually need to purchase the Series X version again in order to get that specific version: it may simply be a matter of downloading (a likely huge) update to bring the game up to the Series X standard.
Source: VGC
