Threads
- The PS5 Pro didn’t have the smoothest launch last year, which is due to multiple reasons.
- Since its launch, many games have finally started justifying the PlayStation 5 Pro’s existence.
- Unreal Engine 5 titles are still a mess and give a hard time even to the strongest console, aka the PlayStation 5 Pro.
This generation of consoles has been a disaster since its launch, whether it’s the availability of the hardware itself or the inflated prices in the initial years of PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. However, after almost 4 years, Sony released a mid-gen refresh of its PS5 console. This refresh was inevitable considering the same happened in the PS4 generation. Though this time around, the reception of the Pro console wasn’t the same as the PS4 Pro’s.
Why The PS5 Pro Wasn’t Received Well
The PS5 Pro was revealed back in September 2024 and has received mixed reactions from hardcore Sony fans as well as other gamers and reviewers. The main problems with the console are its price, the absence of a disc drive, and the lack of many current-gen-only first-party titles. At $700, many considered the console to be a bad value, even though it does offer double the amount of storage (2 TB instead of 1 TB) to add to its value factor.
Devs Are Finally Catching Up
Now, almost one year with this refresh, more and more developers have started to understand and make use of the extra horsepower that PS5 Pro offers. For instance, the first-party title Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is a great example that showcases the true potential of the Pro console, thanks to the great optimization done by the devs.
The team at Digital Foundry did a deep dive into reviewing Death Stranding 2. They stated that the PS5 Pro runs at a much higher fidelity than the base PS5 while delivering a solid 60 FPS experience, which just isn’t possible with the base machine without some visual cutbacks.
Not just this, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is another excellent example of why the PS5 Pro is the definitive place to play games if you’re not into PC gaming. In Digital Foundry’s analysis of this game, it was found to be running at a relatively higher resolution on the Pro console while maintaining RTGI and a solid 60 FPS. You can see the actual numbers in the comparison chart below.
While these are already released titles, the upcoming ones aren’t far off in terms of utilizing the available horsepower to provide a better experience. One of Capcom’s most anticipated titles, which is Resident Evil Requiem, is found to be targeting 60 FPS with ray tracing enabled, according to Digital Foundry. This is another great feat for the PS5 Pro, as the base machines will most likely target 30 FPS with RT and 60 FPS without RT. Other than these few examples, there are many other titles that take full advantage of the PS5 Pro’s hardware.
The Inevitability of PSSR 2.0
Another feature that the Pro console brings to the table is a new in-house upscaler called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). This feature is exclusive to the PS5 Pro console, as it operates more like DLSS than AMD’s FSR, which relies on software rather than dedicated hardware. The PSSR is another plus point for the PS5 Pro, as it creates a much clearer and sharper image than the base console with FSR. Moreover, the PSSR also resolves the shimmer and trail effect that is typically found in FSR upscaled images.
The famous trusted leaker “Moore’s Law Is Dead” in his stream said that currently, the PSSR requires 864p as the base resolution to render the image and upscale it to 4k using AI. And that Sony is also working on a new PSSR version that would significantly enhance visuals and performance on the Pro console. This was also confirmed by Mark Cerny himself in a Q&A session with Digital Foundry, who is the lead system architect of the PlayStation 5 Pro.
Unreal Engine 5 Titles Are Still A Big Mess
Unreal Engine 5 is still a Stutter Engine 5, as pretty much every game made using this engine ends up getting performance issues on consoles as well as high-end PCs. Developers need to focus on using or creating their own in-house engine unless EPIC games comes up with a universal solution for such grave performance and visual hiccups on its UE5 engine. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is the latest victim of Unreal Engine 5’s poor optimization. It doesn’t run as smoothly as other games that use proprietary game engines and dips frames right into the 40s range, even on the Pro hardware.
A True Powerhouse If Utilized Correctly
With each passing month, the library of games that offer superior performance and visuals on the PS5 Pro is increasing. Furthermore, upcoming titles like Resident Evil Requiem, Ghost of Yotei, and Grand Theft Auto 6 will be delivering a better experience on the Pro, especially once PSSR 2.0 gets released in the same year. Though, as of now, we have enough selection of games that advocates for the PS5 Pro to be the definitive place to play games, even with the current PSSR.
Thank you! Please share your positive feedback. 🔋
How could we improve this post? Please Help us. 😔
Zain is our hardware expert, known for deep-dive reviews and round-ups on motherboards, CPUs, RAM, GPUs, and cooling systems. He focuses on performance and value, skipping the marketing hype to give you honest, no-nonsense advice.
Join Our Community
