Cities: Skylines II developer Colossal Order has provided an update on the game's PS5 version, which remains under construction more than a year and a half after its scheduled due date of October 2023. Apparrently Colossal Order still has "more things we need to address", and the game won't be arriving before Summer 2025.
Supposed to release alongside the PC version, Cities: Skylines II was indefinitely delayed following its disastrous launch on that platform, which is still plagued by performance issues to this date (thanks, Eurogamer). The last time we heard of the struggling PS5 version was back in October 2024, which the devs blamed on "hardware limitations."
We don't claim to be experts on video game development (being content to tell objectively smarter people whether their games are subjectively "good" or not). Still, it does seem surreal that mammoth, gorgeous RPGs like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II can perform so well on PS5, whereas something like Skylines II struggles to run at all.
According to the devs, back in October, "We are experiencing both simulation issues (CPU) and graphics issues (GPU), which become noticeable when players take certain actions that cause frame rate drops or memory overload. These issues are particularly challenging due to the hardware limitations of consoles."
What do you think is going on with Cities: Skylines II? Is its particular brand of civil and logistical simulation simply too taxing for PS5? Continue to wait in the comments section below.
[source paradoxinteractive.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 12
I'd just give up at this point. The PC version STILL isn't great. The first game has more players on steam. I don't believe the sales they'll achieve will make up for the dev time on this port. This is an order too colossal.
PS5 Vaporware
I'm still waiting for the pc version to get better before buying it.
A shame too since I had a good time with CS1 on my ps4.
Yeah, this game is not good. I really like the first one, and gave this a go on PC, but it is just so bad. Glitches and crashes galore alongside absolute garbage performance. It made the Spiderman 2 port look good by comparison. Not to mention it really had no gameplay innovations that I thought improved upon the first game. Just so disappointing man.
The PC version is pretty calamitous, I’d keep any ports in the oven until it actually runs on PC.
An update on this and Frostpunk 2…
….but what I’m REALLY waiting for is whether Prison Architect 2 will ever see the light of day or not.
I love the first Cities Skylines but I'm aware that this is still not great on pc. More waiting required.
Don't forget, this is the company that refused to give physical owners of the first game the free upgrade to PS5 that digital owners got, because they didn't understand the upgrade system.
They thought if you got the upgrade on a disk copy, you could play without the disk, and hand the disc to all your friends so they would get free copies. I was banned off their forums for pointing out that this is not how it works at all.
Considering they are blaming "hardware limitations" for PS5 not getting Cities 2, they clearly don't understand consoles and don't care to either.
As much as I really want this on PS5 it's still in a bad way on PC. Usually I'd use PC to test new layouts and ideas (that's how I played CS1) and I do sort of play CS2 on PC, it's just such a disaster still. It's the one game I was really looking forward to. I'd put the first game off for maybe a year or two until curiosity got the best of me, luckily by then most of the DLCs had been released too.
Most of my PC friends who did buy CS2 went back to CS1, they also have the hardware but the game is just not built right. It's kind of a love hate thing because the parts I like about building cities do more or less work, I can get good traffic flow (though some trucks still teleport unrealistically) while making some very beautiful cities.
But the economy, tax system, transit and industry are quite wonky. It feels like they gutted some of the core mechanics, implemented some good ideas they'd seen in Mods, grabbed a stack of DLCs and then tried to jam them into the game while at the same time hoping it would hold together. I do time bomb playthroughs, I start the game, zone away, get my traffic flow down, watch the money come in then just wait for everything to inevitably fall into chaos.
I've lost all hope. It'll not come to PS5 in any state other than poorly running or a cut down version.
One of the few times I've preordered a digital game. I was so excited for this.
Sounds to me an awfully lot like the devs aren't very good at their job. The hundreds of other games on the system, a lot of which being bigger and more complex than this and working fine would suggest the tools aren't the problem the people operating them are.
Shame as I absolutely loved the first cities skylines on ps4 and would be well up for a working and good ps5 sequel. Doesn't look like that's coming though.
I don't think it's that weird that Skylines 2 would struggle to run over other games. Comparing it to Kingdom Come is apples and oranges. It's a super detailed simulationist game, that will push CPUs as hard as it can.
The total number of NPCs KC is running AI for at any one moment would fill like half of one street of Skylines. They're doing different things.
In an ordinary hack and slash, if you want to free up power you can just drop some pixels or cut some NPCs and it doesn't make a difference to the core gameplay. In the skylines the game is the NPCs route finding, you can't drop it.
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