For a frame of reference, you can play the Microsoft Store version with an NVIDIA GTX 960, AMD FX-8320, and 8GB of RAM and never see a millisecond of stutter across cutscenes or gameplay, whereas currently, with the Steam port, having an NVIDIA RTX 3070, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, and 16GB of RAM won't save you from micro stuttering insanity across the board. The worst part isn't just that the game's Steam launch was imperfect, or that the April 14 patch made things worse for many, but that the Microsoft Store version of the game suffers from none of these issues. Of the game's 7,000-plus negative Steam reviews - roughly 25% of the game's 28,000-plus review total on Steam - thousands of aggrieved users mention these technical hiccups as the main reason for giving an otherwise enjoyable game a firm thumbs down. It was bad enough that a racing game all about flow and rhythm had micro stuttering and normal stuttering during every cutscene, including every race's intro and outro, but the latest patch has extended stuttering issues to the actual gameplay in ways that not everyone was experiencing before. In addition, posts and comments about the patch's negative effects are clogging up the game's Steam discussions forum page. In the comments of that patch notification, hundreds of Steam users have complained that stuttering and crashes persist, and in many cases, have gotten even worse, now extending beyond cutscenes and race transitions and into the moment-to-moment gameplay itself.
The patch notes were bizarrely vague and curt, simply saying "various stability improvements" without any direct address of players' issues. On April 14, a new patch was dropped for the game. Now, the situation's gotten even worse for many players.