“Cities: Skylines 2 Devs Attribute Console Delays to ‘Hardware Limitations'”

Cities: Skylines 2 creator Tremendous Uncover has acknowledged that it is still not closer to revealing a console release date for the troubled city-building sequel, having encountered what it describes as “hardware limitations” that affect performance on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

Cities: Skylines 2 was originally scheduled for release on Xbox and PlayStation 5 alongside the PC launch last October. However, Tremendous Uncover and Paradox announced a last-minute delay, moving it to 2024 to allow for “more time to meet the quality targets we have established.” Unfortunately, following the game’s disastrous launch on PC—marked by numerous complaints regarding poor performance and simulation issues—Paradox chose to delay its console release indefinitely.

Since then, updates about the game’s development on Xbox and PlayStation have been scarce, but Tremendous Uncover has now provided an update on Steam, highlighting some of the obstacles it faces in bringing Cities: Skylines 2 to consoles. “At present, we are dealing with both simulation challenges (CPU) and graphics challenges (GPU) that become apparent when players engage in specific actions that lead to frame rate drops or memory overload,” the developer elaborated. “These challenges are especially difficult due to the hardware limitations of consoles.”

“For example,” it continued, “when placing larger structures that involve multiple entities, the system struggles to manage the data load. During the computation process (e.g., verifying if there’s enough space or if any entities intersect with existing assets), performance bottlenecks occur, leading to these noticeable problems.”

Tremendous Uncover states that it has succeeded in getting the game into a “stable and playable state” on consoles by “substantially reducing the graphics quality,” yet it also notes that this compromise has pushed issues to a point that it is “not willing to accept.” Therefore, their primary aim is to elevate the graphics quality to an “acceptable level,” after which “additional optimizations are required for both simulation and memory usage before we can share the console version.”

As for the implications of all this for the console release date of Cities: Skylines 2, it remains indefinitely postponed. “Until [these challenges] are addressed,” Tremendous Uncover concluded, “we cannot provide a release timeline to avoid it being premature and potentially misleading. The console launch is a top priority for us; we are exploring multiple solutions, with experts involved, and we’re dedicated to delivering the console version of Cities: Skylines 2.”

In light of the series of apologies that Paradox has issued following the launch of Cities: Skylines 2 (in April, it expressed “sorry” once more after unveiling a heavily criticized DLC), ensuring the console version meets an “acceptable state” is undeniably the right move. However, considering the company acknowledged that the PC release had “not met the benchmark we aimed for” before launch and still