CDPR admits it willfully neglected Cyberpunk 2077's PS4, Xbox One port

Cyberpunk 2077 is a big mess on Xbox One and PS4, and CD Projekt RED now admits they purposely neglected the game on these platforms.

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Out of necessity, CDPR is being very transparent about its recent Cyberpunk 2077 controversy. The last-gen game launched in an unacceptable state with tons of bugs and massive perf hitches dropping to 15FPS with terrible textures. The dev has been publicly lambasted by the industry as a result, and investor's are very concerned.

Now CDPR is taking full responsibility for their actions. The developer admits they focused most of their efforts on making the game run on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and neglected the last-gen version (CP2077 hits 60FPS on PS5, 15FPS on PS4). Remember, CP2077 was originally delayed because CDPR stressed difficulties with optimizing for so many platforms. Even as it admits full neglect, the dev says this is an "unanticipated situation," which is hard to believe.

"It is more about us looking - as was previously stated - at the PC and next-gen performance rather than current-gen. We definitely did not spend enough time looking at that," CD Projekt RED VP of business development Michal Nowakowski said in a new investor's call.

They just forgot to optimize on PS4 and Xbox One--a console install base that commands nearly all of the console market share. CDPR decided to release the game in a bad condition, capitalize on these platforms, and fix the game later.

Gamers feel duped. The media feels duped. And rightly so: CDPR flexed Cyberpunk 2077's crazy 8 million pre-orders right at launch fully knowing they shipped a vastly inferior product.

The worst part is that PS4 and Xbox One gamers had no clue what they were getting into. News travels fast on the internet, but not fast enough. Media didn't get access to last-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 until day-of (only PC versions were offered sooner), and the media wasn't able to use their own captured footage in reviews.

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CDPR co-founder Marcin Iwinski made this excuse about late review copies:

"The reason is that we were updating the game on last-gen consoles until the very last minute, and we thought we'd make it in time. Unfortunately this resulted in giving it to reviewers just one day before the release, which was definitely too late and the media didn't get the chance to review it properly. That was not intended; we were just fixing the game until the very last moment."

CD Projekt RED knew what it was doing. They wanted to hide the game's poor performance. Somehow Sony and Microsoft passed certification for the game. CDPR says both MS and Sony hoped the devs would fix the issues in time, but they didn't.

"In terms of the certification process and the third parties - this is definitely on our side. I can only assume that they trusted that we're going to fix things upon release, and that obviously did not come together exactly as we had planned," Nowakowski continues.

CDPR says they'll fix Cyberpunk 2077 with two big updates--one in January, and one in February.