It’s still extremely early days for PS5 Pro but early expert analysis from Digital Foundry is in, and it’s sounding cautiously optimistic. Of course it’s important to note that you can still think Sony’s new-gen system is too expensive; that’s a perfectly valid point of view. You can also believe the improvements aren’t worth the asking price. However, we can’t ignore the very real enhancements on display, as discussed in the video above.

One thing worth addressing is that some of the details from this previously paywalled video leaked over the weekend, completely removed of context. That led Remedy’s communications bigwig Thomas Puha to release a statement about Alan Wake 2. In essence, some pretty low internal resolutions are being attached to these early PS5 Pro builds, but as Digital Foundry itself points out: the quantity of pixels is becoming less important as we begin to focus on the quality of those pixels.

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So in some games, you’re talking about internal resolutions as low as 864p, but the entire point of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) is to bump the overall image quality using AI-powered technology.

PS5 Pro Shows Real Promise in First Expert Analysis 1
Image: Digital Foundry

As expert Richard Leadbetter explains: “PS5 Pro receives extra GPU horsepower, enhanced ray tracing capabilities, and machine learning capabilities. The idea is for the Big Three to work in tandem, delivering superior quality visuals from a more holistic standpoint. Internal resolution is only one element of overall image quality and PSSR is already showing some promise, delivering results that diminish the importance of the base pixel count.”

Digital Foundry notes that in these early indications, PSSR isn’t on par with industry standard DLSS yet, but it’s an improvement on AMD’s own FSR 2. “Already we can see that the upscaling quality of PSSR lacks many of the profound issues we've noted when FSR 2 is running at very low resolutions. It’s early days, it’s not perfect, but there's grounds for optimism.”

Of course, the experts are basing their analysis on a high resolution rendering of Mark Cerny’s presentation from last week. We don’t know how old the builds are or whether they represent final quality. In other words, there’s still plenty of time for more impressive footage and results to emerge. But these are promising first steps; perhaps they don’t have $700 of value to you, and that’s fine, but it’s already becoming clear Cerny has delivered a meaningful upgrade here.

[source youtube.com, via eurogamer.net]