Mark Cerny and AMD have made a huge announcement in a new interview.
Last December, Cerny revealed that Sony and AMD were working on Project Amethyst, a project to improve machine learning and convolutional neural networks on AMD’s processors. While this technology was obviously going to be used on the PlayStation 5, Sony agreed to make in non-proprietary, meaning other companies, such as Microsoft, can use this technology with AMD.
In a new interview with Tom’s Guide, Cerny revealed the clear results of Project Amethyst, and it’s an obvious game changer: FSR4, the latest version of AMD’s performant upscaler, is coming to PlayStation 5 consoles.
While FSR4 was not the only thing Project Amethyst was working on, Cerny was particularly impressed that Sony’s and AMD’s teams were able to pull this off in a relatively short amount of time. In Cerny’s words:
The algorithm they came up with could be implemented on current-generation hardware. So the co-developed algorithm has already been released by AMD as part of FSR 4 on PC. And we’re in the process of implementing it on PS5 and it will release next year on PS5 Pro.
While PlayStation 5 Pro users will wait a little longer to get FSR4, Cerny has good news for PlayStation 5 Pro owners too. Again, quoting Cerny directly:
It’s not a cut-down [version] of the algorithm. It’s the full-fat version of the co-developed super resolution that we’ll be releasing on PS5 Pro.
And so, if you were impressed with the performance of FSR4, as seen in benchmark videos like this, you can look forward to these improvements coming to the PlayStation 5 Pro sometime in 2026. It sounds like the PlayStation 5 Pro will be brought up to the performance level of a midrange gaming PC, which will then make it a far more competitive option compared to buying a gaming PC.
This is all absolutely interesting, when considering that AMD also has active development partnerships going with Microsoft, but in a roundabout way this also amounts to a loss of sorts for Sony and Mark Cerny. After all the hype that was generated over PSSR, a seeming selling point to upgrade from the PlayStation 5 to the PlayStation 5 Pro, Sony’s internally developed upscaler became the source of drama and controversy as multiple third party games ended up with mixed or even poor implementations that sometimes made games run worse.
This may not necessarily mean that Sony will abandon PSSR. But it certainly looks like the company wasted effort and especially money to develop it. If they could have just worked out Project Amethyst years ago to implement on the PlayStation 5 Pro, then why did go through the effort to try it on their own? But then, this argument would only make sense if FSR4’s implementation on the PlayStation 5 will go much more smoothly than PSSR did. And for that, we’re going to have to wait and see until it’s released to find out.
