The Verge has a new report out with claims that the Sony is prodding developers to get their games to 4K 60 FPS on the rumored PlayStation 5 Pro, with their own upscaling technology.
To briefly review, reporting on the PlayStation 5 Pro has been based on a leaked document from Sony’s developer portal, but Sony has yet to confirm or announce they are making this console. What we know that is relevant to this new report is that the new console will have a more powerful GPU, but the same CPU, with an available overclock. There will also be more memory in RAM, and more of it can be allocated to the developers to use as they wish.
In their latest report, The Verge’s Tom Warren revealed that Sony is pitching their PlayStation Super Sampling Resolution technology to developers, telling them that they can use this upscaler to get their games to 4K and 60 FPS. Doing so guarantees that they can use the “PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced” label for said games in their marketing.
Developers can still get the “Enhanced” label for smaller upgrades; for example if they can push higher resolutions without increasing framerate, or vice versa. They can also use the label if they only use ray tracing to improve game visuals and performance, but not for using variable refresh rate, or a more stable frame rate. It also doesn’t count if they increase only the minimum resolution, without achieveing a higher maximum resolution.
All these conditions seem to indicate that Sony is making sure these developers make use of the additional hardware in the PlayStation 5 Pro, but there’s more. An earlier Verge report stated that “developers are already being asked to ensure their games are compatible with this upcoming console.”
So it sounds like developers are being told they need to put in additional work to get their games on the PlayStation 5 Pro. That’s not something that may be worthwhile for some of those developers. And why is there a need to ensure compatibility? Is it possible for some PlayStation 5 games to not work on the supposedly improved PlayStation 5 Pro?
For those developers who do put in the effort, they can publish patches to get their games upgraded for people who get the new PlayStation 5 Pro consoles. And it’s possible to get even a minimum of performance gain without earning the “Enhanced” label, for example by making use of more memory. But it certainly sounds like a lot of the things that are coming out in these leaks and reports are not things that Sony wanted their customers to know.
Sony likely already has their marketing and communication plans lined up for the PlayStation 5 Pro, so they can only be frustrated that so much has already come out and they can’t talk about it. We will see soon enough if they will be able to take control of the communications back from the public in time.
