Cyberpunk 2077’s next-gen patch tested on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles

Welcome back to Cyberpunk 2077, a game transformed for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. The prior ‘back-compat plus’ versions of the game yield to a brand-new rendition based on current-gen SDKs, allowing CD Projekt RED to fully tap into the capabilities of the new wave of consoles. This is a game with a troubled history and this new 1.5 upgrade delivers both 30fps ray tracing and an enhanced 60fps performance mode, combined with other current-gen improvements such as improved loading times – but how much of an upgrade do users actually get?

First up, it’s worth addressing the elephant in the room: Xbox Series S. There’s no dressing this one up, the junior Xbox has no graphics toggle at all and is set to simply run at a dynamic 1440p, at 30 frames per second. In pixel counts that’s actually a range of between 2304×1296, up to 2560×1440 based on my testing. Purely on a surface level here it’s a shame to see it miss out on a 60fps mode (CDPR says it’s investigating adding it) but equally, no ray tracing features are enabled either. Still, the overall quality of life improvements on patch 1.50 do make Cyberpunk more playable – just don’t expect any revolutionary boosts to its visuals in this case. For that, we have to turn back to PS5 and Series X, where for the first time on console, ray traced shadows are enabled, working in combination with improved screen-space reflections.

Read more