I'm a first-time PS5 Pro owner, and the then-luxury console seemed incredibly expensive at its introductory price of $699. However, it has since risen to $899 after multiple price hikes due to the cost of components and the generally turbulent state of the video game industry. The entry-level consoles are also more expensive than ever, meaning early Pro adopters are sitting pretty.
But for a long time, I felt that the PS5 Pro offered little beyond a few extra frames, a higher resolution, and extra options here and there. It rarely lived up to its promise to strip away graphics and performance switching to offer a single definitive experience. PSSR wasn't mature enough to boast the promised upscaling, which often resulted in blurry images or worse visuals that required quick updates or inevitably forced me to turn it off entirely. It's only recently that the console has started shipping, and it could be just in time.
PSSR is a game changer for console games
Since Sony introduced PSSR 2.0 a few months ago, it has completely transformed the PS5 Pro and actually made it feel like a premium console. If you're not familiar with this technology, it uses machine learning reconstruction to output a higher quality image than what the hardware renders in real time, similar to AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS, but exclusive to PlayStation.
It just wasn't accurate before the refinement. In games like Alan Wake 2 or Star Wars Outlaws, it actively made the image look worse, even though the performance was better compared to the base console. The point of sale for this expensive console wasn't there, so it made sense for people like me to feel buyer's remorse. But now it's fixed and it does such a fantastic job, some of the results are amazing.
When I played 007: First Light last month, I soon realized that it lacked graphics switches, instead offering a single 60fps experience that looked and felt fantastic. It's prone to dropping a few frames during the most explosive sets, but for the most part I'm blown away by how it can look so good and perform so well.
Not only does PSSR increase the output resolution, but it also does an excellent job of cleaning up the image, making the jagged edges of shadows, leaves, and figures much less noticeable. You might not be looking at a native 4K picture all the time, but PSSR does a fantastic job of making it look that way most of the time.
Crimson Desert is much the same, its performance mode is the optimal way to play on PS5 Pro because it uses PSSR so effectively. I haven't had time to test many other high-profile examples, but Ghost of Yotei rounds out the bunch as one of the best-looking games of last year.
It puts other consoles to shame, and I imagine Xbox, Nintendo, and even the Steam Machine will follow suit with similar technology now that components are more expensive and we're getting closer and closer to the dark plateau of photorealism. However, I am most interested in how PSSR will take Grand Theft Auto 6 to new heights.
GTA 6 will play best on PS5 Pro thanks to PSSR
Sony has been tight-lipped about how Grand Theft Auto 6 will look and run best on the PS5, as Rockstar is clearly targeting it as a major platform and will be sold using the brand much more than Xbox. Most people play on PlayStation, and since there's no PC version yet, it only makes sense to focus here.
I've already agreed that GTA 6 will probably run at 30fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X, so Rockstar can fill the open world and its characters with as much epic detail as possible, and it would follow in the footsteps of Red Dead Redemption 2, which ran at the exact same resolution. However, it featured native 4K resolution on the Xbox One X, and that was incredibly impressive for the time. But could the PS5 Pro take things even further?
I reckon it could, or at least I believe Sony is working very closely with Rockstar to make sure GTA 6 takes full advantage of the PS5 Pro. I mean why not? This is the most powerful console on the market and should be able to make what I have no doubt will be the greatest game of all time look its best even if it's stuck at 30fps. Or maybe the opposite will be true and the extra horsepower will allow GTA 6 to have both graphics and performance modes on Pro using PSSR.
Rockstar has probably also done a lot of current-gen hardware optimization for their in-house engine over the years, so I expect those years of hard work to come into play with GTA 6.
Just imagine stepping into Vice City for the first time and being able to get lost in every little detail with complete clarity, knowing that your obscenely expensive console is doing everything in its power to make that possible. I want the characters to look beautiful, the violence to look gritty, and everything to crack instead of feeling like the hardware is trying to keep up. And I have a feeling that it will be the same with basic consoles. They're six years old at this point, and Rockstar has a habit of pushing hardware as far as it can go.
If you're going to play GTA 6 at launch – and let's face it, you are – there's probably no better way to experience it than on PS5 Pro. And instead of only providing a modest increase in performance and image quality, I think PSSR is finally in a good enough place to push the graphics potential much further.
