(Photo : Paradox, Colossal Order / Screenshot taken from Steam)
Developer Colossal Order said that the console release for Cities: Skylines 2 is delayed due to "hardware limitations" on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
The game was originally set to come out on consoles alongside PC in October last year. However, publisher Paradox and Colossal Order announced a last-minute delay for the former and pushed it to this year.
Cities: Skylines 2 on Consoles
They said that this was to allow them to have more time to work on the game. This lets them help it reach the quality targets that they have set for it. But Cities: Skylines 2 had a disastrous PC launch where players complained of poor performance and various simulation issues.
This forced the studios to indefinitely postpone the launch of the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Not much information has been shared since then but Colossal Order posted a new update on Steam.
The developer shared some of the challenges that it has experienced in trying to bring Cities: Skylines 2 to consoles. The studio said that it struggled with both simulation issues (CPU) and graphics issues (GPU), according to Eurogamer.
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Colossal Order added that these issues were much more noticeable when players take certain actions that can cause the game's framerate to drop or result in memory overload. It said that these problems are particularly more difficult to address due to hardware limitations on consoles.
It gave one example where placing larger buildings that involve several entities will cause the system to struggle in handling the data load. They added that during the calculation process, the Cities: Skylines 2 experiences performance bottlenecks, Sports Illustrated said.
Various Hardware Limitations
The PC version of the game also suffered similar issues where the AI that the game uses to generate NPCs decided to instead render individual teeth for every single citizen. The studios added that Cities: Skylines 2 is in playable form on consoles but has significantly lower graphics quality.
Paradox said that this was a compromise that it was not willing to make just to make the game available on consoles. They added that they will continue to optimize the game for memory usage and simulation efficiency to reach the visual fidelity that they prefer.
The post noted that further optimizations are needed to make Cities: Skylines 2 ready for a console version that fans can be satisfied with. The studios said they are unable to provide a release estimate until all issues are addressed, according to Insider Gaming.
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