CD Projekt Red has yet to announce a formal Cyberpunk 2077 release date. Nevertheless, representatives of the studio have done numerous interviews about the game since E3. A recent leak suggests that the game could release in 2019, and a new interview could actually support this. During the interview, the game’s Lead Cinematic Animator, Maciej Pietras, spoke about how the game is optimized.
Cyberpunk 2077 Release Optimized for Current-Gen Consoles
Maciej Pietras recently spoke with CG Magazine about Cyberpunk 2077. He primarily spoke about the game’s recent gameplay demo and how the game is optimized for different systems. When Pietras was asked whether hardware would limit the game, he responded; “Oh no, actually from the top we knew we were developing the game for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. And we started the process of optimization right at the start. So that’s probably what you see running the demo is a PC with like an i7 and 1080TI, so it’s not astronomical specs.”
It’s interesting to note that the game is optimized with current generation consoles in mind. When the game’s story trailer was shown, fans weren’t sure whether it would be coming to current-gen, next-gen, or both. If the game is optimized for current-gen; it suggests that the game’s release will not be delayed to align with the launch of next-generation console hardware.
“Basically,” continues Pietras; “because we are thinking from scratch about optimization, how streaming works, how to introduce global illumination for instance without overwhelming the PC or the GPU. Now we take those things into account right at the start and optimize for that. […] You know we are always finding new ways to use the new technical features that speed up the work and there are very low costs when it comes to the optimization part, and as I said, that we have a team of programmers who are dedicated to work on optimization. Simply because of that, I don’t think we ever reached that point and say something is too costly based on hardware requirements. That did not happen yet. What we showed in the demo was running in real runtime so there’s nothing there that we were trying to hide.”