September 27, 2020
According to recent analysis from Digital Foundry, Demon’s Souls on PS5 may miss a critical 4K 60FPS benchmark despite spectacular performance.
It’s hard to imagine there is a more impressive-looking launch title than Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake, slated for a launch day release on PS5. However, despite the impressive vertical slice of gameplay from the PlayStation showcase, one integral question remains: does it pass next gen standards? According to a recent analysis from Digital Foundry, the game will run at 1440p 60FPS — missing an integral 4K 60FPS benchmark.
As I mentioned, the breakdown comes directly from the experts over at Digital Foundry who did a full breakdown of the Demon’s Souls remake footage. Seen below, the video takes you through the in’s and out’s — from ray tracing, to frame drops (there were none), to fidelity as compared to the original PS3 release:
Though overall impressions for the remake were resoundingly positive, they did make note of the fact that the game only hits 1440p 60FPS. Noting that this is likely a demonstration of the performance mode, Digital Foundry similarly believes that there is likely a 4K 30FPS “visual mode” that will allow for better fidelity at a hit to performance.
It’s worth noting that everything should be taken with a grain of salt pre-release; while Digital Foundry’s breakdowns are industry leading, they note that there may be last-minute changes to the PS5 firmware, software, or bugs in the final release that might impact the game in either direction. However, taking the 1440p 60FPS performance mode as fact, the obvious question is whether the hardware demonstrates enough of a step to be considered truly next gen.
Over the past year, PlayStation executives have been making statements re-affirming their desire to make clean cuts between generations in terms of software and hardware. While we now know that they are more likely to adopt the Xbox strategy of promoting cross-generational releases (likely thanks to the success of the PS4), missing 4K 60FPS in a performance mode opens up questions on whether the hardware will stay competitive over the course fo a hardware generation.
In any case, Demon’s Souls will launch exclusively for PS5 on November 12, 2020. If you haven’t pre-ordered the game, you can grab the title on Amazon to help support DualShockers.
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September 27, 2020
