Sony brings AI upscaling to the regular PS5, starting with Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei

Drawing a big, sharp image every frame is hard work for a console. So many games cheat a little. They draw a smaller image, then stretch it to fit your TV.

Plain stretching looks soft and a bit fuzzy. AI upscaling does it smarter. A small neural network looks at the image and fills in detail that the plain stretch would lose.

Think of it like a skilled restorer working on an old photo. They don't just blow it up. They know what a leaf or a brick should look like, so the enlarged picture stays crisp.

Sony describes its PS5 Pro version, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), this way: it analyzes game images pixel by pixel and uses AI to upscale them with more detail and stability than older methods.

PSSR arrived with the PS5 Pro, which launched two years ago, Engadget notes. Sony says players and developers kept asking whether the regular PS5 could get the same kind of image boost.

The answer was no, for a simple reason. PSSR asks a lot of the hardware. Sony says its computing demands made bringing it to the PS5 impossible until now.

The Verge explains the gap. The standard PS5 has no dedicated machine learning silicon, the part of a chip built for AI math. The PS5 Pro does. That is why the Pro can run the heavier model.

Sony calls QSSR "a new performance tier of AI upscaling." It's a lighter, quicker evolution of PSSR made to run on the regular console.

Sony says two ideas make it work:

• A streamlined neural network: a smaller AI model that does less work per frame.
• Hand-tuned code: an implementation tuned by hand to get the most speed out of the PS5.

QSSR came out of Project Amethyst, Sony's AI graphics collaboration with AMD, the company that designs the chips inside every PS5. If you follow chips, AMD has been busy with AI lately, including its deal for World Labs.

The catch: Sony is clear that QSSR is not PSSR. "PSSR remains the gold standard on PS5 Pro," the company says. QSSR brings "notable improvements to both image detail and image stability" on the regular PS5.

Don't expect the regular PS5 to suddenly match the Pro. The Verge, citing Digital Foundry's early hands-on, says QSSR isn't as fast as PSSR. You should expect an upscaled image closer to 1440p on PS5, instead of the upscaled 4K the PS5 Pro aims for.

Sony principal graphics engineer Daniel Craig explained the difference to Digital Foundry:

"On PS5 Pro, developers almost uniformly output to 4K and adjust render resolution beneath it. On PS5, teams have to be more flexible, tuning not just render resolution, but also their intermediate and final presentation targets depending on the graphics mode."

In plain words: on the Pro, the finish line is always 4K. On the regular PS5, each game picks its own finish line, mode by mode.

Sony also shared comparison videos from both games. The Verge says QSSR appears to make graphics a little bit sharper. Small, but it's the kind of small you notice on a big TV.

Two Sony studio games lead the way, and both got patches today:

• Marvel's Wolverine from Insomniac Games
• Ghost of Yōtei from Sucker Punch Productions

In both, QSSR shows up as "an additional graphics option on PS5," so you choose whether to turn it on.

Mike Fitzgerald, head of technology at Insomniac Games, says QSSR "adds more pixel-level clarity and stability" to the game's environments. He points to "the busy streets of Madripoor" and "the dense alleyways of Shinjuku" as places where extra detail shows up. He calls it "a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience" for PS5 players, and "a perfect companion to the launch of Marvel's Wolverine."

Fitzgerald also says he is excited for more games to use QSSR in the future. That's a studio boss cheering for other studios' games, which is a nice thing to read on a launch day.

Jasmin Patry, lead rendering engineer at Sucker Punch, says QSSR is good at fine details in characters and environments. She adds that it does so "with a level of temporal stability that hasn't been possible on the PS5 console until now." Temporal stability means the image doesn't shimmer or crawl as the camera moves.

Patry also admits the team wanted this for a long time. "We've long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro," she says, "and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal." Note the careful wording: a step, not the finish line.

In real life If you own Ghost of Yōtei on a regular PS5, install today's patch, open the graphics settings and look for the new QSSR option. Flip it on, ride somewhere with lots of grass and trees, and compare.

The timing is good for Ghost of Yōtei players. Engadget reports the game's Complete Edition launches today too, with a story expansion and a roguelike mode. Engadget compares that mode to No Return in The Last of Us Part 2. People who already own the game can upgrade for $15.

So on the same day, Ghost of Yōtei owners get a sharper picture for free and a new mode if they want to pay. One patch, two reasons to boot the game up again.

Sony says QSSR "will be offered broadly to all PlayStation developers." That's the line that matters most for everyone who doesn't play these two games.

Adding it should not be a huge job for some studios. Craig told Digital Foundry that QSSR is "fundamentally a drop-in replacement for titles that already support PSSR," needing only a few days of tuning, according to The Verge. That makes it likelier that developers will bother.

Why it matters: Plenty of PS5 games run at a lower resolution than people would like. Digital Foundry put it this way: "low resolution and poor upscaling have impacted so many titles in this generation, but QSSR could make a big difference."

Sony hasn't said which games come next or when. For now, it is two games and a promise of more. If you play on other consoles too, Microsoft has been busy with its own additions, like Xbox's new Mythic achievements.

• If you own a regular PS5: your console just gained a new graphics option for free, through game patches. No new hardware needed.
• If you play Wolverine or Ghost of Yōtei: update the game and try QSSR in the graphics menu today.
• If you were thinking about a PS5 Pro for sharper graphics: the Pro still has the stronger upscaler. QSSR narrows the gap, but Sony says PSSR stays the gold standard.
• If you play other PS5 games: watch patch notes. Games that already support PSSR on the Pro are the likeliest to add QSSR soon.