Almost pharaonic project by CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 is now under attack from all critics. The title, released on December 10th, offers a gaming experience on home consoles that is far below the expectations and promises of the players at the Polish studio. Bugs, crash, pickup technology, Cyberpunk 2077 never seems to have been optimized for PS4 and Xbox One. And for many, the game should never have been released on these machines. The failure of Cyberpunk 2077should we definitely give up cross-gen games?
Across genes: a consumer-friendly promise
The cross gene is above all a promise to consumers. As with what we find on PC, the idea is to allow the public to have a game regardless of their machine generation. Whether you work on Xbox One, One X, Series S, or Series X, you can play your favorite games without worry. Of course, the experience is supposed to be more intense on the latest released home consoles (Xbox Series X | S) thanks to various optimizations, but if this gives all gamers the opportunity to discover the latest innovations without having to spend between 300 and 300 $, hard on it to be.
The most recent release of Cyberpunk 2077 offers “Arguments” to the defenders of the generation break. While the main complaint with Cross-Gen so far has been that it does not unlock the full potential of the next generation, we can now be sure that the games are too “ambitious” to run properly on the previous generation. A claim that, in my opinion, couldn’t be more false and, most importantly, shouldn’t lead us to give up on crucifying. Explanations.
Problems? Yes, but not the cross-gene
Whether or not it’s the Halo Infinite demo at the Xbox Game Showcase in July Cyberpunk 2077 and its flaws galore, yes it is hard to believe in the benefits of cross-generation. However, when we dig deeper into these projects, we quickly find that the cross gene has little to do with it. In the case of the Master Chief and his plastic, we have to look to the communication side. Halo Infinite was billed as THE next generation slap and developed as a killer app for Xbox Series X and Series S sales in full trailers. It raised disproportionate expect ations. Or rather, Xbox communications, headed by Aaron Greenberg, has made so much money that it has crystallized all the promises the new generation made for a game.
Unfortunately, we saw a build in July that was several months old. Whole sections of the optimizations were missing, and above all the demo was not the final goal, but the “current” state of development. What will the final game look like? At the moment it is impossible to say, but whether it is the Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S or PC versions, there is still a lot to do, as the postponement to the end of 2021 shows. Plus the pictures. The results shared recently by the developers are rather encouraging and allow us to understand how lengthy the optimization process is.
With Cyberpunk 2077 the logic is completely different. The title was developed on consoles from the PC version. An extremely ambitious PC version that is particularly impressive on high-end hardware and is difficult to replicate on Xbox One and PS4. This is not surprising to anyone as these two machines are a long way from the big PCs and therefore you have a lot of resources to adjust. A job that developers are familiar with, but that … takes time!
Time, this precious resource
According to their own statements, CD Projekt Red underestimated the work to be done and the time required for a satisfactory result. Worse still, the Polish developer believed he could fix the problems with a patch on the first day, which unfortunately was nowhere near enough. The game will obviously improve in the coming weeks and after several fixes have come in, it will no doubt provide a satisfying experience. In the meantime, however, the delays in adapting the PC version to consoles are the root cause of the problem. In no way is it the cross-gene, although the next generation versions do not benefit from any patch or optimization.
To be very specific The common point of these two productions is time. The time to take care of all phases of creating a game, from pre-production to optimization, of course through the long development phase and this on all affected media. In other words, almost anything that can be done on Xbox Series X can be done on Xbox One. It’s all about concessions. It’ll be less beautiful, less fluid, slower, and maybe less brilliant at issues of AI, density of items displayed, or loading, but with the time required, the vast majority of titles will be possible both generations. It is therefore primarily a matter of budget and resource allocation. Issues that do not directly concern us as consumers and that should not question the cross gene. The availability of games over two generations is a real benefit for gamers, especially those who cannot immediately upgrade to the next generation. Let’s not let a bad example play the game of some developers or publishers who would probably prefer to skip a real optimization for PS4 and Xbox One.
The point of view shared here is not representative of that of the editorial team. It concerns the author and only the latter.
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