Delisted from the PlayStation Store in December last year, Cyberpunk 2077 has finally re-emerged on Sony’s storefront, available to buy once more for PS4, PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5. Removed from sale over its many bugs and performance problems, its re-arrival suggests that the game has significantly improved since launch – and at the very least, it should not crash back to the PS4 front-end, behaviour we noted in every single patch update we tested until now. So is the CD Projekt RED epic really ready for prime-time on PlayStation consoles with its recent patch 1.23 update? We’d say that it is – with caveats.
It’s interesting to note that CDPR’s patch notes for version 1.23 are relatively light, at least compared to prior updates. Still by most games’ standards, it packs a decent punch. We get a string of bug fixes specific to certain missions, along with crash fixes, CPU optimisations, and improved streaming. This sounds promising, but it’s worth highlighting that even Sony itself still seems to have reservations about the game. The store actively discourages buying Cyberpunk for use on the base PS4 – the most popular and widespread of last-gen consoles – saying that it’s “not recommended” with more updates due to arrive for it this year.
But we do have some good news here. The game didn’t crash once in our tests – something we couldn’t say for prior updates. We can’t totally rule out that it won’t crash, but the game certainly seems more stable right now. On top of that, there are genuine improvements over patch 1.2, and they are most noticeable on the vanilla PS4 – the console that Sony doesn’t recommend you buy the game for. In fact, in all of our stress tests the standard PS4 sees the biggest improvements in terms of getting closer to the elusive 30fps. In the worst throttle points, there are improvements of up to 5fps – indicating a substantial optimisation push. It’s not always such a significant increase – jerky 20fps shoot-outs aren’t hugely improved – but regardless, 1.23 is consistently ahead. Patch on patch, it does seem like we’re seeing gradual but noticeable improvement.
