After a raft of new reports around the potential spec of a PS5 Pro console supposedly set to launch later this year, even more details are being claimed over at Insider Gaming, one of the more prevalent and usually-reliable sources of early info.
With the souped-up console’s specs suggesting a pretty significant increase in GPU capability and only incremental boosts to CPU and memory, there’s been a lot of speculation around what this means in real-world benefit to PS5 games, especially existing ones. Digital Foundry’s in-depth analysis is particularly insightful in suggesting that we’ll (hypothetically) mostly see this new hardware pay off in better image quality and added ray-tracing features, rather than hugely-boosted frame rates across the board, though that’s on a game-by-game basis. Something CPU-limited like Dragon’s Dogma 2, for instance, might be a smoother and prettier experience but not necessarily a locked 60FPS on PS5 Pro.
EXCLUSIVE – PS5 Pro Enhanced Requirements Detailedhttps://t.co/CuZvDwXZU7
— Insider Gaming (@InsiderGamingIG) March 29, 2024
Now, Insider Gaming is reporting that it’s learned of a special “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label that will be used to denote games which benefit, or have been updated to benefit, from the increased power of the Pro, much like we saw with the PS4 Pro. It’s also claimed to have the breakdown of how this label will be applied and the criteria necessary for a game to receive it. In this case, Sony reportedly wants developers to offer a PS5 Pro-exclusive graphics option that combines the below in order to be eligible:
- PSSR to upscale resolution to 4K
- A constant 60FPS
- Add or increase ray tracing effects
That seems mostly targeting at legacy games, and Sony has reportedly also outlined other criteria that could see the PS5 Pro Enhanced label applied, which might benefit newer and more demanding games, including:
- Increased target resolution for titles that run a fixed resolution on the standard console
- Increased target maximum resolution for titles that run at variable resolution on the standard console
- Increased target frame rate for titles that target a fixed frame rate on the standard console
- Inclusion of PS5 Pro Raytracing effects
That means that when shopping for titles to take full advantage of your PS5 Pro console, the little “PS5 Pro Enhanced” badge will be there to let you know that a game is fully optimised for the new hardware, either with better visual features, increased performance or higher resolutions, or some combination of the three.
Of course, as usual, it needs to be pointed out that while Insider Gaming’s PlayStation reporting has been pretty well bang-on to date, this is all firmly in rumour territory until PlayStation itself comes out and says something. Anything.
