[UPDATE] Early PlayStation 5 Pro analysis highlights improvements to first-party titles, including Hogwarts Legacy, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Alan Wake 2, and more

[Update] Digital Foundry’s first renders of the PlayStation 5 Pro are now available to the public. You can watch them below.

[Original Story] The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to bring visual and performance improvements to games even without an update, although some games will benefit more than others from the console’s improved specs.

In the latest episode of their weekly podcast, which is currently only available to Patreon Tech experts at Digital Foundry have analyzed a high-quality version of the console’s announcement video, and have uncovered some interesting details about each of the games featured, as reported by X by @JMaine518First-party games like The Last of Us Part 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart see increased image quality and more stable performance thanks to the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution scale. Another game from the first installment, Horizon Forbidden West, runs at higher detail, but the resolution didn’t look 4K, so it probably wasn’t using PSSR. Speaking of Gran Turismo 7, Digital Foundry revealed how the game ran at a lower resolution (1188p) than the base model, upscaled to 4K with PSSR on PS5 Pro and at native 4K without ray tracing.

When it comes to third-party games running on the PlayStation 5 Pro, the console’s increased power doesn’t seem to be enough to handle the lower base resolutions some of these games run at. For example, Alan Wake 2 runs at the same resolutions as it does on the base model, 846p and 1260p, though likely using PSSR instead of AMD FSR 2. The 30fps mode can also feature ray tracing, while the 60fps mode features screen-space reflections.

Hogwarts Legacy is a step up from the base model, featuring ray-traced reflections and possibly even ray-traced shadows mixed in with screen-space reflections. Interestingly, one game that could see a significant performance boost on the PlayStation 5 Pro is Dragon’s Dogma 2, which appeared to run at 60fps, possibly using PSSR. Assassin’s Creed Shadows also appeared to run at 60fps but at a lower resolution of 846p, and was presumably upscaled to a higher resolution using PSSR.

Notes from Digital Foundry Direct Weekly #180 – PS5 Pro Analysis

The Last of Part 2 – 1440p internal resolution at 60fps in this PS5 Pro mode (same as PS5 performance mode) with improved image quality due to PSSR

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – Between 1440px and 1800px…

— King J 🤴🏿 (@JMaine518) September 15, 2024

Based on this early analysis, it does look like the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaler will be a real game changer, according to Digital Foundry. The other two pillars of the PlayStation 5 Pro, while important, don’t look like they’ll be as impactful as the AI-powered resolution upscaler.