Three years have passed since the neon-drenched streets of Dogtown first opened, and in 2026, Cyberpunk 2077 has finally become the masterpiece we all hoped for. But let’s rewind to September 2023—the Phantom Liberty expansion and the massive Version 2.0 update were supposed to be CD Projekt Red’s ultimate redemption arc. Instead, console players were plunged right back into the chaotic, glitch-riddled nightmare of the original 2020 launch. If you think Night City is dangerous, wait until you’ve fought a glitch that eats your save file.
Phantom Liberty completely overhauled combat, RPG progression, and NPC behavior, yet on consoles—especially the poor little Xbox Series S—it felt like performance took a nose dive. All those shiny new features came bundled with texture pop-in so severe you’d slam face-first into invisible walls, frames that chugged worse than a half-melted braindance, and save files that simply refused to load. It was deja vu all over again, only now with a $30 price tag.
🔥 Xbox Series S: The Punching Bag
Playing through the expansion on the Series S was an exercise in patience. The console, already the weakest of the current-gen family, buckled under the weight of 2.0’s ambitions. Textures took leisurely vacations before rendering—so V often stood awkwardly in a world of low-poly blobs. One moment you’re staring at a beautifully desolate marketplace, the next you’re walking into an invisible barrel that hasn’t bothered to show up yet. Frame rates dipped noticeably, especially inside Dogtown’s densely packed vertical slums. And the crashes? Like clockwork after a couple of hours.
But the real kicker was the save bug. Nothing says “good morning” like booting up your game and finding your latest 10-hour save corrupted or completely ignored. The terror spread across platforms, but Series S users got the spiciest version of the roulette.
🚀 Series X & PS5: Not Safe Either
The more powerful consoles didn’t escape the glitchfest. Over on the Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit, a flood of complaints poured in from Series X and PS5 owners alike. PS5 players suffered the infamous save-file corruption that CDPR later patched—but patching couldn’t bring back ruined saves. Vanished, like Johnny Silverhand’s good mood. On both platforms, a bizarre bug caused the game to act as if Phantom Liberty wasn’t installed at all. So if you had auto-saves made inside the expansion, you were locked out entirely until the system decided to recognize the DLC. Cue the collective screaming.
Xbox users also shared a gallery of hilarious—and sometimes horrifying—visual glitches. Player skin textures went haywire, turning V’s perfectly augmented face into a smeared oil painting. NPC bodies levitated nonchalantly in midair, usually because the bench or chair they were supposed to sit on forgot to exist. And V’s clothing? A random fashion disasters generator. You’d load in wearing neon zebra pants instead of your sleek netrunner suit, only to have it fix itself after opening the inventory. As if the game was just playing pranks.
🪲 Community Pain in a Nutshell
The table below sums up the platform-specific chaos that players documented:
| Platform | Common Issues |
|---|---|
| Xbox Series S | Heavy texture streaming delays, frame drops, invisible collisions, save refusals |
| Xbox Series X | Skin texture corruption, NPC levitation, wrong clothing, occasional crashes |
| PS5 | Save file corruption, DLC not detected, progress loss |
Reddit became a support group where fans swapped horror stories and workarounds (clear cache, reinstall, pray to the tech-gods). The patch meant to fix the PS5 save corruption did stabilize new saves, but those already bitten were left mourning their lost Night City journeys.
🔧 A Road Still Under Construction
CD Projekt Red kept hammering away with hotfixes, and by early 2024 the console experience stabilized—though the scars remained. In 2026, Phantom Liberty runs beautifully on all platforms, a testament to the developer’s stubborn dedication. Yet the launch period serves as a harsh reminder that even redemption arcs have rough chapters. Performance issues reminiscent of Version 1.0 shouldn’t have resurfaced, especially for an expansion that was otherwise a narrative triumph.
Nowadays, Dogtown is a bustling, stable hellhole. But ask any early console adopter, and they’ll tell you: for a few weeks, the true final boss wasn’t the Chimera or Kurt Hansen. It was the save/load screen.
So here’s to Night City—still messy, still magical, and finally running at a decent framerate. But next time, CDPR, maybe launch the expansion alongside a stress ball for console players.
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