Art_Vandelay

I can see how they would match PS5's GPU power by simply running the games at a low ~800p resolution. But it's just not possible to match PS5's CPU on a handheld, and there's no easy way to automatically scale it down.

The only path I see is to require explicit support from devs. It's not exactly the same as the Vita, which required a separate SKU, but something more along the lines of the PS5 Pro (although in the reverse direction).

@GamingFan4Lyf Yep, Microsoft has managed to turn Xbox into a brand that is as boring and unexciting as its parent company. But who cares, they're making rivers of money, which is awesome for the fans!

@DonJorginho "Consistency in dev implementation is the issue."

It's not that simple. Dev implementation is only one of many variables that could explain the issue:

1) SDK version has been reported to make a difference. First-party studios might have early access to newer versions.

2) Input resolution has also been pointed out. Sony's games seem to be implementing 1440p > 4K, while others are rendering natively at much lower resolutions and are getting worse results with PSSR then they were getting with FSR2.

3) And lastly, PSSR seems to be causing graphical glitches when combined with certain raytracing effects such as ambient occlusion.

Now, these patches shouldn't have been released in the first place, but I'd bet there are contractual obligations at play here. And most of what I described above is actually on Sony's side.

Finally, I don't think there is much to worry about at the end of the day. DLSS was pretty bad when it first launched, which is par for the course when it comes to AI upscalers. Machine learning is resource intensive and time consuming. PSSR will get better with time.

"Xbox Series down about 49 per cent".

It's very ironic that Xbox's "biggest generational leap ever" will be a handheld. Does it even make sense to release a true Series X/S successor at this point?

@Danloki John participated in a preview event for the media, before the Pro launched.

@Whately86 lol the unhinged carioca.

Btw, keep f*ck*ng that chicken.

It sounds like this is 90% done.

I now expect a full on Bloodborne remake to launch with the PS6.

These issues have seemingly been caused by an older version of PSSR. Which is par for the course for brand new hardware, especially considering it employs a piece of tech that gets better with time by definition (machine learning's gotta learn).

A clear indication of this is how Sony's first party implementations have been stellar. It's expected that Sony would give its studios early access to the latest versions of its SDK.

Granted, this is not great for people who got the Pro on day one, but it's also expected that early adopters would have to endure some troubled waters. It's also not a great look for the console, but these things do tend to be quickly forgotten provided the issues are ironed out in due time.

The silver lining here is that Sony is getting an important head start in the console race by being the first to deploy AI-based upscaling. This tech should be an important foundation of the PS6, and it will be very mature by the time the next-gen console comes out.

@Whately86 lol fox all the way. You vulture?

@UltimateOtaku91 These are very different experiences, and I admittedly have no interest in handhelds, but I can tell you that PSVR2 has refreshed my passion for gaming in a way I wasn't expecting at all.

There has been a lot of discussion around the industry about how to grow the user base, how to beat competitors, how to grab the attention of the newer generations and so on.

Even though these are all valid concerns, it is bewildering that Sony can't get the fundamentals right. This Pro enhanced confusion is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how bad the PlayStation Network user interface is. Especially the web front-end.

I have experienced numerous times the unforgivable issue of using the search function for a particular game and coming out with no results, or with suggestions that have nothing to do with what I was looking for. And that often happens even when I type the exact word match. Sure, it doesn't occur with big games, but it's incredibly common with smaller titles, especially VR which I search a lot.

How can this be?

@Dampsponge Yeah, because eeeveryone thinks exactly like you and nobody cares about graphics in games.

Many have pointed out, but I'll reiterate: if you ever own a PSVR2 headset, don't miss out on Synapse. It's the kind of game that justifies the existence of this piece of kit. What a power trip.

@LordOfTurnips Games streaming is highly reliant on the proximity of node servers. The internet infrastructure might be good enough for the most part in Brazil, but Sony won't be able to justify the investment in servers anytime soon, unfortunately.

@Whately86 Hey, I'm in Belo Horizonte, MG.

@SJBUK Yep, that is probably why it doesn't work in VR yet. And there's an extra layer of challenge as, ideally, it would have to blend with DFR (dynamic foveated rendering) as well.

The three stages of coping with trauma:
1) "Just these four".
2) "And Indiana Jones".
3) "No red lines".

@SJBUK Yes, the potential for VR is enormous. On flat-screen games, the benefit of the Pro can be limited in cases where the CPU is the main bottleneck. But in VR, you're almost always limited by the system's GPU. The benefits will be especially noticeable when PSSR works with VR, since many games render at a resolution that is quite a bit lower than the OLED panels'.

@Oram77 I think it's the first-person camera perspective. It's totally unnatural for this kind of game.

Oh, the classic example of taking a real problem and using it as an excuse to impose draconian measures. This is so incredibly naive, unthoughtful and ill conceived, that I struggle to understand where these people have their head at.

This is a super complicated issue. And in such situations, government overreach is almost always the wrong direction.

Whoa, not so fast. One quarter alone is just a picture, but what matters at the end of the day, is the film. Even with this quarter's good results, the trend still points downwards.

Sure, the overall situation is probably not as dire as some may have led us to believe, but one good quarter is by no means a conclusive indication that the industry challenges are fully addressed.

The Pro is not just about selling more consoles. It's about having an option with the "world's most powerful console" stick on it. Even if a buyer ends up getting the standard model, the halo product strongly influences that decision by virtue of brand image alone.

It's a similar situation to PSVR2. Having a VR headset accessory ends up weighing in a person's decision to buy a PlayStation rather than an Xbox, simply because it's nice to have the option down the road. The machines are too similar this generation, so any bullet point in the box can sway people in either direction.

Microsoft only has Game Pass to show for it, and even though the value proposition is sound, it's just not sexy enough.

"we understand PSN isn’t officially available in every country"

That is a total bs excuse for the fake online rage. I live in Brazil, where there was no PSN back in the PS3 days. And that has never stopped me from creating a US (or whatever else) account and buy my digital games from there. All I needed was an international credit card, which is also something anyone can easily get.

@get2sammyb I'm afraid I disagree, Sammy. To me, Sony sound a lot like they have their heads buried in the sand. There's so much that went wrong with Concord that is not being alluded to here.

I know, I know... to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The culture war can get tiring, but culture might as well be all that matters at the end of the day, because it permeates everything whether we like (or see) it or not.

The tidal shift is too big to ignore at this point.

@Gooseman42 Same here. PSVR2 is my first headset, but I got it at launch. I've been building rather strong VR legs, but Kayak is a little much for me to handle. Truth be told though, I've yet to manage smooth turning in any game. Whenever I enable it, I immediately feel I'm cross-eyed.

@Thumper "The difference between 90Hz and 120Hz is not as significant as 30Hz and 60Hz."

Not true if you're using v-sync. In this scenario, the framerate would be bouncing between 60 and 120 Hz, which actually looks worse than a stable 60 Hz.

Maybe you assume that every 120 Hz display supports VRR, which would solve this issue, but that is also not true. Most early 120 Hz TVs did not support VRR.

Btw, love the profile name/picture. Thumper was one of my first VR experiences, and it immediately sold me on the platform.

@TrickyDicky99 "GT7 has earned the nickname GT Sport Directors Cut".

Well, I'm glad I skipped Sport for the better version, then. Feel sorry for you, though.

I know, "it's exponential, it will quickly get much better", but every AI generated art that I see looks eerily soulless.

I rarely get games at launch, but I'm willing to make an exception for this one. Thanks for the review.

Yeah, Metro and Alien are definitely two of the highlights, but I would add Behemoth and Wanderer.

This was my personal highlight of that VR Showcase. I'm glad the gameplay lives up to the visual style.

@StylesT Might as well just wait for the PS7.

@NEStalgia I agree, but reread the article carefully and you'll spot the signs.

"...despite solid ratings on Metacritic..."

For a while now, the opinion of critics has been diverging from the general public, steadily but surely. The same has been happening in the film industry.

There's an ongoing cultural shift that hasn't been reflected in the gaming media at large, and inside dev studios for that matter. Don't Nod has fallen victim to that, but the most prominent example is obviously Firewalk.

The reported strike is another telltale sign of just how clueless these people are. There's this frankly astonishing entitlement by workers that studio heads somehow owe them a job. Jesus, the market speaks, and reality has this strange habit of eventually showing its ugly head.

"Oh, so insensitive!" Yeah, so is life, deal with it.

Look, I'm not saying that this is the only, or even the main reason these studios and projects are failing. There are too many games, they are frequently released in a bad state, budgets have skyrocketed, inflation is reducing people's buying power, and so on.

What bothers me is how people are pretending that culture has nothing to do with it; that there isn't a conversation to be had here. They can keep burying their head in the sand and see where they'll end up.

@Ralizah I'm sure most of us who disagree with Sony's PC push understand the reasons that lead them into this path.

The crux of the matter is whether the gains will outweigh the losses. And I assume you understand where those losses could come from.

The thing is these losses are not as tangible as the gains, because they are potential and long-term. So, it all comes down to a matter of opinion, because we can only speculate about the future at the end of the day.

What you should keep in mind is that stockholders' pressure very frequently leads companies to prioritize short-term gains even when the people in command are fully aware of future damage, except for growth stage startups.

@naruball Oh God... yet again, I must say I agree 100%.

Interesting... That could actually be the reason for the seemingly inexplicable delay of AC Shadows.

Ubisoft is understandably very nervous about this game's launch, and another flop should send the stock prices into a death spiral.

Can't say I'm happy about the Chinese tentacles reaching further into the gaming industry, but Ubisoft really had it coming.

@NEStalgia Se the reply above. It's actually quite simple. Think Elden Ring. It's like upgrading your GPU. The messaging sounds weird simply because they try to put very technical stuff in layman's terms, adding silly marketing terms.

Not sure if you watched the Digital Foundry hands-on video, but what sold me on the Pro was the footage from F1 2024. The added ray tracing features genuinely looks like a generational leap.

Sure, few games will take advantage of the new hardware to that effect, but the potential is definitely there.

@Balie3000 You are overcomplicating this. Think in PC terms. Whatever the cap (30, 60, 120 fps), if a game drops frames on the PS5, the more powerful GPU of the Pro should help them get closer to the target framerate.

The extent of it depends on how far the PS5 is from that target, and also the cause of the performance bottleneck: if the game is mainly CPU bound, the Pro will actually do very little.

Another potential gain that people don't mention as often, is resolution. Most current games employ some form of DRS (dynamic resolution scaling). And when they run on the Pro, they should get much closer to the resolution ceiling, improving image quality. And that is exclusively dependent on the GPU.

Jesus, I had no idea they were this clueless.

Sophy is slowly taking over, very cool.

One of the best use cases for ML AI, along with resolution upscaling, of course.

@LikelySatan Cancel culture was very much celebrated and one sided for many years. But the tables have been seemingly turning and the same people who were on the previously winning side are now quite upset.

You live long enough, and you realize that the pendulum never fails.

Remember a few years ago, when a side of the isle was celebrating cancel culture, while the other side was alerting that the shoe would eventually be on the other foot?

Lesson learned? Not quite, as the same exact thing is now happening with censorship.

@Fritz167 Since I don't have a good counter argument about the topic at hand, I'll revert to personal attacks.

@Fritz167 Oh, I agree that Sony has fallen in many senses. The whole push to appeal to "modern audiences" is a cancer that has metastasized badly throughout the whole company. And we're starting to see the results of it popping around every now and then.

But that has nothing to do with the price of the Pro. I've mentioned Apple, Nvidia and Intel/AMD to prove the point, but here's another one for you:

Microsoft is launching a $600 Xbox that has nothing new going for it except for a larger drive and a literal coat of paint. If that doesn't tell you what you need to know, you're beyond hope.

@Fritz167 Exactly right, I'm glad you're reiterating the point I made earlier. We're firmly into diminishing returns with tech. We will pay increasingly more money for increasingly smaller leaps. And that's what it is, regardless of what you think or do. Get over it.

@Fritz167 "If you buy a PS5 PRO at that price, PS6 will cost the same or more."

And if you don't, Sony will adjust (downgrade) the specs of the PS6 to make it cheaper.

Gosh, how long will it take for people to adjust their sense of reality? You've seen the price of smartphones steadily rise and cried about Apple and Samsung being greedy. You've seen the exact same happen to GPUs. You've seen CPUs stagnate in performance for years now. And so on.

So, is it all a big, coordinated scam or (maybe) the times have changed? Look, no one can defeat physics. The main source of performance and efficiency gains have come from node shrinks in chip manufacturing. That doesn't quite work anymore, because angstrons are really freaking small and expensive to get to.

I hate to be the bearer of disappointing news but, in 2024, better performance = more expensive.

@thefourfoldroot1 Yeah, Sony has been weirdly quiet about the advantages of the PS5 Pro for VR. The haters would argue that they've abandoned PSVR2, but last night's State of Play would prove otherwise.

I guess it's a matter of priorities at the end of the day. PSSR is one of the big headline features of the new console, and it seemingly doesn't work with VR yet.

But I'm sure developers are already at work trying to take advantage of the extra 45% of GPU horsepower, which aligns nicely with the bump from 60 reprojected to native 90 fps.

@carlos82 You conveniently missed the "hassle-free gaming experience" part in your quote.