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Cyberpunk 2077 was “better than it was received,” CDPR dev says
(www.pcgamesn.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Yeah, I actually can get behind this. They got a lot of crap for the technical performance of the last-gen console version, partly because there was no current-gen native version. Having played it on PC day one my impression was that it was rough-to-normal (still better than day one Skyrim). Design-wise, the combat parts and open world design are the least interesting parts of it to this day, but even at the time I thought the narrative elements and obviously the visuals were great.
Just to sanity check this, even with the torubled launch the PC version reviewed with an average of 86 on Metacritic and sold very well. It was a technically rough launch and they should have delayed the console ports at the very least, but it's not a bad game.
"(still better than day one Skyrim.)"
I'm glad you mentioned this because I almost never see anyone make the comparison, and skyrim didn't get nearly as much hate despite that fact. I remember if you were playing on PS3, walking into water would crash your game, and it was like this for the entire first year of the game on PS3. It also had a problem where save files that were too big would guarantee save file corruption. It was the definition of unplayable for lots of people.
Not saying cyberpunk is better than skyrim, just explaining how dire the launch for skyrim was, many people have forgotten just how rough around the edges skyrim was.
You did get screwed if you tried to play Skyrim on the PS3. The hardware limitations on the console caused obvious instability in the game that I don't think they ever fully resolved.
But I don't think most people played Skyrim on PS3 so they aren't going to have that same experience. I know I didn't.
Except they released the game, in "enhanced" version, on the Switch, which is just old android phone hardware from several years back. The PS3 was totally capable of running it. The port simply failed - time constraint, investor pressures...doesn't matter. They chose to not make it better in the end when the hardware was perfectly capable of running the game.
The number of people that play a game on console is vastly underestimated by pc-primary gamers when previous titles by a developer were PC only. Skyrim on console was big. Big enough that they decided to port it to everything they could. You don't waste that kind of developer time and not expect a return...
Specifics matter in this case.
My quick review of specs shows the Switch having a 4GB of RAM to work with. Not a lot, but enough that even with the OS, you shouldn't run into too many problems.
The PS3 had 512MB of RAM. But actually, 256MB was dedicated to video, so it only had 256MB for the game itself. Oh, and the OS used a chunk of that. So, the PS3 has less than 256MB of RAM that is usable by the game. And that's where you are running into issues, especially in a game like Skyrim that is heavily reliant on memory for the amount of state the game tries to keep track of.
The point is a bit moot, in that TES got big on consoles as soon as Morrowind. Oblivion was already a console headliner.
I do think fewer people went with the PS3 version because people knew it was broken, just like Bayonetta or Red Dead Redemption. I would bet it still outsold the PC version at the time (that balance may have shifted over the years of re-releases and giveaways).