Like clockwork, and just as we reported on Tuesday, game publisher CD Projekt Red has officially released the popular Cyberpunk 2077 video game on the Mac, which is now available starting today in various application stores for macOS including Epic Games Store, GOG, Steam, and Apple’s own first-party Mac App Store.
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which features all the game’s downloadable content (DLC), is only available in the Mac App Store for $82.90, while the other storefronts offer the base versions of the game only. Of the three aforementioned non-Mac App Store storefronts, only GOG is running a special price of 53% off.
Those that already own Cyberpunk 2077 on these storefronts for Windows can download the base version of the game on macOS for free, but Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is unfortunately a separate download from the Mac App Store only and isn’t a free download even if you already own Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on another platform.
Worthy of note, CD Projekt Red has spent a lot of time optimizing Cyberpunk 2077 for the Mac, and it’s specifically designed for Apple Silicon-equipped Macs with M1 and newer chips inside of them that sport at least 16GB of unified memory. The game harnesses Apple’s Metal API to take full advantage of the hardware in Apple’s latest machines.
While Cyberpunk 2077 has notoriously been coined as a hardware-intensive game that makes even some of the highest-end gaming PCs struggle with high performance, the team has targeted at least 60 FPS on macOS systems, and the presets for various Apple Silicon setups should help with that. Obviously, Macs equipped with higher-end chips like the M4 Max will perform better than those with the base M1, but that’s to be expected.
Thanks to its Apple Silicon-optimized presets, Cyberpunk 2077 runs surprisingly well on the Mac. While some of the announced features to the game are already implanted, others will come in a future update. Among the features that CD Projekt Red has incorporated (some ready at launch, and others not) are path tracing, AI upscaling, frame generation, HDR monitor support, Spatial Audio, and head-tracking with AirPods.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a fantastic game with dynamic gameplay that many players find extraordinarily entertaining. It features an open world exploratory experience with not only first-person shooter gaming dynamics, but also car driving and RPG dynamics. Player response in the Steam store, for example, is overwhelmingly positive – a badge of honor for any game publisher to receive.
Apple certainly seems to be taking gaming a little more seriously now than they ever did, and we think that the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on the platform is a welcomed change that could attract more gamers to the macOS platform – but it’s still a far cry from the Windows gaming experience with higher end graphics hardware as of right now.
Are you planning to take advantage of Cyberpunk 2077 on the Mac? Let us know in the comments section down below.