Not every game runs better on the PS4 Pro

Spend $400, lose performance

While I’m no fan of the recently released PS4 Pro, the idea of having 1080p games run at a consistent 60 frames per second is very enticing. I’d love to experience Bloodborne with better performance (if it ever gets a patch) or have any poorly optimized games (inFamous: Second Son) run nicer. I guess that wasn’t to be, at least as far as and Digital Foundry have discovered.

While not every title with Pro enhancements is running worse, a lot of key titles offer downgraded performance for people on 1080p sets. I can definitely understand some dips in framerate in 4K mode, but why should a lower resolution suffer for features most users won’t notice? For that matter, why is every game with a Pro patch required to run in Pro mode?

The most damning that they talk about is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and how the very first level runs at an almost constant 10 frame deficit. This comes down to the PS4 Pro being forced to super sample the textures, regardless of whether you want that or not. There are also issues with Skyrim: Special Edition, but I don’t think any Sony fans would be surprised by Bethesda’s poor coding skills.

For the moment, if you have a 1080p television and aren’t planning on upgrading to 4K, it looks like sticking with the regular PS4 (or the Slim model) is the way to go. I would have figured that even with super sampling, games would run smoother due to the boost in GPU and CPU speeds, but I guess Sony messed up somewhere. Either that or developers are getting really lazy with their updates.

[Eurogamer]