Cyberpunk 2077 Delay PS4 Xbox One

Update: Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has responded to this rumour, which originally suggested that the game's recent delay to September was due to significant issues with the current-gen versions of the title.

Posting on the official forums, Benzenzimmern of CD Projekt Red says: "Of course we're optimizing for the Xbox One, and for the PlayStation, and for the PC, because that's what you do in the last stretches of game development. While the game is made, lots of things are unoptimized, because they're all in flux, changing, and still not finished."

The post continues: "So simple answers like "They delayed the game because of X" might make for a good rumor, but don't hold a lot of truth. There's always many reasons. Among them, and I can speak for myself, simply fixing bugs, so the game is as polished as possible."

"No hidden agendas, just working on making the game better."

So there you have it, CD Projekt Red is basically saying that the rumours are a load of nonsense. While Cyberpunk 2077 has indeed been hit with a hefty delay, the official word is that the development team is simply focused on making it as polished an experience as possible. Let's hope the game lives up to expectations later this year.

Original story: In case you haven't heard, Cyberpunk 2077 was hit with a pretty substantial delay recently. The open world role-playing game was pushed from April to September, with developer CD Projekt Red stating that the additional development time would allow for a much more polished product. But according to Borys Niespielak, a supposed Polish insider, current-gen consoles are the main reason for the delay.

Niespielak speaks about the situation on a popular Polish podcast, which has since been translated into English. He basically says that CD Projekt Red was running into real trouble when it came to getting Cyberpunk 2077 to perform on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One -- the latter especially. It's unclear whether Niespielak is referring to just the base systems or the Pro and X as well.

Apparently, the developer had a deadline on solving these issues: if things weren't fixed by January 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 would have to be delayed -- and so here we are. This is a rumour that, at least on a surface level, does seem feasible. We can't speak for the reliability of Niespielak, but he's clearly confident enough to appear on camera and talk about what he's been told.

When Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay was first revealed, many -- including ourselves -- said that it had to be a next-gen release. Since then, the title's definitely been on the receiving end of a "downgrade" or two -- but that's mostly just the nature of game development. Still, based on everything that we know, Cyberpunk 2077 is a hugely ambitious project -- it certainly wouldn't surprise us if there is indeed some weight to this rumour.

Since publishing this article, God of War director Cory Barlog did tweet that "every game runs badly until you optimise for the hardware in the final push before gold". While true, it would appear that the optimisation process is taking longer than CD Projekt Red expected, hence it's been unable to hit its original deadlines. Let's hope everything gets cleaned up before September, eh?

[source youtube.com, via altchar.com]