It’s easy to sit in your room with a fancy rig kitted out with an Nvidia 3080 and laugh at Cyberpunk 2077’s performance on last-gen consoles. And let’s be real - the performance is pretty funny. The bugs are so widespread and prevalent that the internet has taken to memeing the entire game - which, if The Witcher 3 is anything to go by, will probably run excellently in a few months’ time.

But that doesn’t give you license to take the piss out of people who want this game - which was advertised for last-gen consoles as well as next-gen ones and PC - to run on their base PS4 or Xbox One. My 2013 PS4 sounds like a Bugatti Veyron, but it managed to run The Last of Us Part 2 just fine, and Ghost of Tsushima looked genuinely gorgeous. I know they’re not quite as taxing as Cyberpunk 2077, but still - it’s reasonable to assume that a blockbuster game that was delayed three times should run on the hardware it’s marketed for, especially if you’re spending 70 quid on it.

While it’s up to individual people whether they want to opt for a refund or wait until February to properly experience a patched version of Cyberpunk 2077, the fact remains that neither of these options should be options at all. When you ship a game on a console and tell players it’s for them, you’re banking on the fact that they believe it’s in working order - and, judging by how well Cyberpunk 2077 has sold so far, people certainly believed CD Projekt Red’s statement that Cyberpunk 2077 was.

cyberpunk 2077 ps4 bugs performance

That alone proves that people are more than justified in wanting their last-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 to work properly - so why are so many people online treating proponents of Cyberpunk on last-gen as if they're stupid, or, worse yet, championing classist jargon about how they should just play on next-gen. Need I remind you that console shortages have made it next to impossible to secure a PS5 or Xbox Series X at face value, prompting scalpers to triple or even quadruple the price. I’m a games journalist and I don’t have a PS5 because I can’t cough up enough to buy a ridiculously inflated secondhand one - it is literally my job to play next-gen games and I still can’t do it. There’s also the fact that the next-gen versions are literally just the last-gen versions with a little more hardware oomph behind them.

On top of that, Cyberpunk was supposed to launch back in April - seven months before next-gen consoles even entered circulation. After almost a decade of development - predominantly on last-gen dev kits - it’s frankly absurd that a game like this could be launched in a state that bricks the consoles it’s been marketed towards for over five years. Even king pissbaby Elon Musk is joining in with this stupid tweet.

 

“The objective reality is that it is impossible to run an advanced game well on old hardware,” Musk said. Has he ever played Red Dead Redemption 2? The objective reality is: that’s a load of steaming shite.

I’ve seen lots of other people on Twitter posting similar nonsense, as well as multiple videos on YouTube touting the same sentiment - “Of course Cyberpunk 2077 looks bad on a seven-year-old console.” That’s ridiculous, frankly, but it’s also pretty shitty to spout that rhetoric. Not everyone is a diehard player who spends the majority of their time and money on this hobby.

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That point goes further - before I started working in games, I would almost always buy RPGs that would last a long time. I love The Witcher, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. Having games like these, even on older consoles, allowed me to pursue this hobby without having to fork over every bit of spare cash I had. Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was advertised for having a massive world filled with all kinds of side quests, is something that would last an average person several months. This alone offsets the need for next-gen - if someone who only plays for a few hours a week could get Cyberpunk on PS4, why would they buy a PS5? They don’t care about Demon’s Souls, or Spider-Man - they just want a game to immerse themselves in over the weekend, and Cyberpunk 2077 was marketed as something that fit that mould like a glove.

It’s not as easy as, “haha, obviously this doesn’t run on old consoles,” or “just wait for the PS5 version.” Neither of those arguments are remotely fair, because this is a game that was supposed to be viable for PS4. It’s also a game that could have helped people wait for the scalper-led next-gen economy to die out after the pandemic, or people who simply don’t want to spend half a grand on a toy a month before Christmas - people have families and this is an expensive time of year.

Think before you have a go at someone online for being justifiably upset that something they had every right to be excited for has been taken away from them. Don’t be a dick just because you don’t care about the game or were fortunate enough to snag yourself a fancy machine fuck all people have access to.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available for PC on GOG.COM, Steam and Epic, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Stadia from December 10, 2020. When you buy Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG.COM, 100% of your money goes to CD PROJEKT Group and supports their future projects.

NEXT: Cyberpunk 2077 Complete Guide And Walkthrough

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