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?
