After years of build-up and multiple delays,Cyberpunk 2077was released on Jun 01, 2025 in one of the most controversial launches in all of video games. The game, which was promoted as a truly next-gen game with a living, breathing open-world, turned out to be extremely buggy and unpolished.Cyberpunk 2077’s developers at CD Project Red have worked nonstop since then to bring the game closer in line with what players were promised.
A series of major updates were released intermittently in the time since release which have made the game more stable and playable. Now, in a surprise relaunch, CD Project Red have released a new update for thenext-gen release ofCyberpunk 2077that focuses not just on stability, but bringing in gameplay features and graphical fidelity that were promised in the game’s pre-release gameplay reveals.
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This 1.5 update is focusing mainly on improvingthe experience on next-gen systems, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Stadia. Specifically, the overhaul of the game’s crowd AI, which applies to the NPCs and pedestrians of Night City, will only be coming to next-gen. Looking back on the first gameplay reveals forCyberpunk 2077,the population’s AI was touted as one of the most impressive things about the game, as NPCs seemed to interact and get out of each other’s way. When the game first released, however, NPCs had been dramatically scaled back, both in number and interaction, essentially just being lycra-wearing ghosts that would walk laps around city blocks and spout the same lines of dialogue at the player if they got close.
The new update adds more reactions from pedestrians, allowing them to realistically react to player actions, including the ability to fight back. After all, Night City is meant to be a dangerous cyber-dystopia where everyone knows to kill or be killed. This upgrade is not for everyone however, as it seems Xbox One and PS4 players are stuck with the original AI.
Next-gen only upgrades to games released between console generations are nothing new, but usually they covergraphical fidelity or frame rate increases availablewith a more powerful console. This is because most of the processing power needed for modern triple-A games goes into rendering the world and models. It is much rarer to see a next-gen only update that affects an AI element of the game.
With this update, CD Project Red seems to bedistancing itself from the last-gen versions ofCyberpunk 2077.Perhaps this is a good thing, since new releases coming to last-gen consoles are becoming rarer and rarer and the current generation of new consoles is already in its second year. Focusing on using the increased power of the new consoles could bring out more of the game’s potential.
Cyberpunk 2077is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
