Here comes another game to go through the PlayStation 5 Pro wringer.
Round 8 Studios have revealed on Twitter that Lies of P is enhanced for PlayStation 5 Pro. They have not shared any more details at this time.
While some gamers have secured pre-orders, the PlayStation 5 Pro won’t be officially released until this November. So it’s possible that some developers, industry people, and even some content creators and influencers already have the console in their hands. But, short of Round 8 telling us what they have changed, we are not likely to find out what these changes are until that time.
Round 8 has established a good reputation for themselves over the last year. In the incredibly crowded year of 2023, Lies of P did receive recognition as one of the best games that released then.
And Round 8 also demonstrated they were very capable in the technical sense, producing a title that looks and performs well on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.
But then, the big question that comes neck is a heavy weight around the necks of Sony and developers that earned that PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced label. Will the enhancements that they made be good enough to justify spending on a PlayStation 5 Pro?
On one level, this is a technical question. Sony’s pitch is that gamers would not have to choose between quality or fidelity of graphics and performance on this console. Gamers, however, have a more specific standard in mind: 4K resolution, and a 60 FPS framerate.
That demand does seem to clash with the interest developers have in things like ray tracing and global illumination. Ideally, developers would be able to deliver on what fans want, and their own goals, all at the same time.
So this will ultimately be a matter of not only what the PlayStation 5 Pro is capable of, but of what the different game studios can themselves accomplish.
But there is also another side to this question, that relates to the business of gaming, and the gaming community. The prevailing narrative is that the PlayStation 5 Pro is pricing out most gamers from the best console performance available.
If there aren’t enough improvements in PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced games, it will definitely hurt Sony’s reputation. It’s also true that there will be gamers who can’t afford the new console upgrade, so that reputational hit may not necessarily affect sales of the console.
But all of that is at stake with all these PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced games. So everyone’s eyes are now on Round 8 if they can live up to these expectations.
