The Last Guardian runs better on PS5 but only with the disc

60fps for physical media stalwarts

The Physical Media vs. Digital Media war rages on, and it’s a battle that I feel passionately about. Gimme codes for everything. I don’t need mountains of boxes to stash away. If that means losing some game I’d never replay a decade from now, good riddance (time of your life).

Score one for the other team. Apparently, Team Ico’s The Last Guardian has some next-gen enhancements on PS5 but only if you have the disc. As NX Gamer presents in the video above, The Last Guardian runs at 60 frames per second with the disc in the drive, and 30 frames per second as a digital entitlement makin♒g use of PS5 backward compatibility.

Post-launch patches are the culprit. When The Last Guardian first launched in 2016, it had an uncapped frame rate. That didn’t play nicely with PS4 hardware, so it was patched to introduce a 30fps cap. It made the game much more stable.

Now, anyone who plays The Last Guardian on their PS5 with a disc is getting the unpatched version; anyone who plays it on their PS5 in a digital format is getting served a patched version. That’s why the disc runs better now that the PlayStation 5 is actually capable of hitting those higher frame rates.

Finally, The Last Guardian as it was meant to be played. Just a console generation later and only for people who are clinging to physical media. You’ve won the battle but you will not win the war.

[Eurogamer]