PC gamers will be angry if the true reason for delaying Cyberpunk 2077 is

One Polish director argued that Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed for one single reason - because of console versions.

Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed last week for Fall 2020, and while that release delay was well-received among CD Project fans, the new rumor may shed a different light on it. Namely, in a podcast on Remigiusz Maciaszek's YouTube channel last weekend, Polish director Borys Niespielak, also an insider of the gaming industry in Poland, appeared. He had his rationale for why Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed by an additional five months and if this information is true, the delay will not be at will.

Niespielak says Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed due to current consoles. Specifically, one console is problematic - the original Xbox One, which plays very poorly on the CD Project and failed to make the necessary optimizations until early 2020, which is why the development of Cyberpunk 2077 had to be extended.

This means that the game is essentially over - or as they said in the CD Project: it is playable from start to finish, and it could be played on PC if there were no consoles hindering the launch of the game. If you are wondering why then CD Projekt simply did not launch the game for platforms that are not problematic, the answer is because it is not feasible in the first place and it is not financially profitable in the second.

Microsoft prohibits the release of games solely for a particular model of the Xbox One console. CD Projekt with Microsoft, on the other hand, has been working closely together - for the past two years, Cyberpunk 2077 has been featured on their E3 stage, so it would be tricky to release the game for PC and PS4 only. And even if the PS4 version is ignored, it would be really bad for CD Projekt to release the game on PC first, since console sales would later be weaker, especially with the fact that CD Projekt does not use any protection against pirating its games on PC- rather than launching them at DRM-free on GOG.com.

It is even probable that this reason for delay is true because it would not be the first such case. The Witcher 3 itself experienced a downgrade of graphics precisely because of consoles, and we've had a few instances of such delays before; for example, Dragon Age: Origins was half a year late for PC while BioWare was editing versions for consoles back then.

For PC players, this kind of thing is extremely frustrating because as much as they try to distance themselves from the consoles with more powerful hardware, it is clear that these consoles still have an impact on what is played on the PC and when.