Xbox Series X version of Cyberpunk has by far the best visual quality on consoles

Microsoft has marketed Xbox Series X as the most powerful console, but despite winning the numbers game, counting TFLOPS versus PlayStation 5, the latter has had quite a few games running better like Dirt 5, Devil May Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. When it comes to Cyberpunk 2077, on the other hand, it seems like it's the Xbox Series X version you should go for if you wish to play it on console.

This was reported by Digital Foundry, which has tested Cyberpunk 2077 for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. This is mainly because the Xbox Series X-version comes with a quality mode for graphics, something that not available for PlayStation 5. With this, the resolution is increased "dramatically", and there's also more crowded streets, more vehicles as well as ambient occlusion.

"Arguably the best console experience right now is Series X's quality mode, which caps output frame-rate to 30 frames per second but increases resolution dramatically - it's dynamic and floats around 1512p in the city, but can be reach beyond 1728p in simpler scenes.

Latency increases and obviously visual response is lower, but increasing the pixel count so dramatically is a boon for image quality. Cyberpunk 2077 uses temporal super-sampling heavily, meaning that information in the current frame is derived from past frames too.

The higher the resolution of the previous frames, the higher the compound gain in the current frame - the end result is a much more attractive, less grainy and blurry game. There are further enhancements too, such as ambient occlusion, which is not present in performance mode, nor is it present in the PS5 build."<em>

Even the budget Xbox Series S are performing better that PlayStation 5 currently, as Digital Foundry continues:

<em>"In effect, Series S works as a tweaked version of Series X's quality mode. Resolution is clearly much, much lower - it can run beneath 1080p. However, the resolution bounds also increases beyond PS5's best, reaching around 1296p. More to the point, it retains most - if not all - of the quality mode advantages, meaning that you get the higher vehicle count and crowd density, plus features like ambient occlusion."

If you turn the quality mode off, things get more even, with Xbox Series S/X having a more uneven frame rate, but still offering more life in the streets:

"In like-for-like tests, it does drop lower while areas that do not have any slowdown at all on PS5 can have some minor issues on Series X. However, city density in terms of NPC and vehicle count sees Series X clearly running with higher settings - it's not a like-for-like comparison."

So to sum it up, if you have the opportunity to choose, here's the Digital Foundry summary:

"If you're happy with 30 frames per second, the premium Xbox offers the best visual quality by quite some margin along with additional graphical effects and vehicle/NPC density."

Thanks VGC