After the majority of a decade in development and several delays this year alone, CD Projekt Red’s absolutely massive and highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 has finally released for everyone. However, rampant performance issues with Cyberpunk 2077 have shone a light on Stadia, and for once, it’s for the good.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Stadia this year, through the new platform’s ups and downs. In that time, though, Stadia has never had a bigger test or a bigger chance to prove its critics wrong than Cyberpunk 2077. The absolutely massive game is a test for basically any hardware you put it on, whether that’s a next-gen console such as the PlayStation 5 or a fully-loaded gaming PC with the best hardware from both AMD and Nvidia.
The unfortunate truth about Cyberpunk 2077 is that the game is so big and so demanding that a lot of the gaming hardware in the hands of consumers today just can’t properly handle it, and the past 24 hours have really shown that. Performance issues have run rampant, especially on last-gen consoles, with even the upgraded PS4 Pro and Xbox One X barely being acceptable experiences. Gene Park, a games reporter from The Washington Post, even pointed out that Xbox Series S performance is not great.
As we showed you last night, Google Stadia handles Cyberpunk 2077 like a champ, with no performance issues in our initial testing and only a few random bugs in-game here or there. It’s no secret that this game as a whole is having glitches and bugs on all platforms, but the performance issues plaguing other systems don’t seem to be affecting Stadia whether it’s running 4k/30 or 1080p/60.
But you don’t take just our word for it. The general consensus out there is that Stadia is perhaps the best place to play Cyberpunk 2077 right now. Those who had a negative impression of the service at launch or have been known for cracking jokes at the platform’s expense have come out today to give Stadia credit for how it handles this intensive game.
Tom Warren from The Verge tweeted saying that Cyberpunk on Stadia “looks good.” In a further post on The Verge, his colleague Nick Slatt said that Stadia “may be the best way to play” Cyberpunk for most people right now given how difficult it’s been to get the next-gen consoles and GPUs that the game relies on for a good experience.
Beyond that, Forbes reported Paul Tassi rated Stadia’s performance with Cyberpunk 2077 behind only that of “a good PC.” That’s pretty high praise, frankly, since Stadia is a free platform where a PC capable of running the game in 4K would easily cost over $1,000, if not considerably more. Of course, there’s always GeForce Now as well, where it sounds like the game is running fairly well!
Is this magically going to change everyone’s opinion about Stadia? Unlikely, but it really seems like Cyberpunk is the game Google needed to prove itself, and thankfully, things worked out in Stadia’s favor.
More on Stadia:
- Stadia is rolling out direct-to-YouTube livestreaming now
- Stadia rolling out redesigned web app w/ new UI, updated icon, more
- You can now play games on Stadia in 8 more European countries
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