The Last of Us, Skyrim Run Slower on PS4 Pro
By Jason Gallagher 13 November 2016
A report from Digital Foundry uncovers troubling problems with the performance of major titles on the PlayStation 4 Pro, with some gamers experiencing frequent framerate drops.
It’s been an exciting week for PlayStation fans, with the PlayStation 4 Pro finally hitting stores this past Thursday. Sony’s latest console is advertised as being twice as powerful as the original PlayStation 4, which theoretically means that games that support the Pro should look and run better.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case right now for some titles, according to a report from Digital Foundry. While the problem does not appear to be widespread, Digital Foundry notes that certain games, including The Last of Us: Remastered and Skyrim: Special Edition, sometimes run into performance issues that leave the game worse off than the original PlayStation 4 version.
Digital Foundry reports that The Last of Us, which received optimization from Naughty Dog for the Pro, has significant frame rate dips during gameplay. To be fair, some of these drops occur when attempting to run a 3200 x 1800 HDR resolution. But the report notes that there is no option to lock the game at 60 frames per second.
This is especially apparent when trying to play on a 1080p screen. The Last of Us renders at a higher resolution and then downsamples to 1080p for some minor visual improvements, but the frame rate drops are still present, even with the reduced visual fidelity. Framerate dips are also present on Skyrim: Special Edition, which just released in October, as well as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Again, these framerate dips are at least a little more forgivable when the games are trying to render a higher resolution, but there’s no excuse for these titles to be stuttering at 1080p. At that point, gamers would probably be better off just playing the game on the original PS4.
This news has to be music to the ears of Microsoft, which has already taken a few shots at the PS4 Pro since it was announced. Microsoft, of course, is working on an upgraded version of the Xbox One that it’s calling Project Scorpio. With Project Scorpio not releasing until late 2017, Microsoft obviously would like gamers to hold off on purchasing the PS4 Pro and negative news like this report might just do the trick.
None of the associated developers have responded to Digital Foundry’s report at press time, but one has to wonder if this is perhaps something that could be fixed in a patch. Sony executives have openly talked about the PlayStation 4 Pro stopping gamers from switching to PCs, but if the company doesn’t get this fixed soon, that comment could come back to haunt them. We’ll just have to wait and see if other games experience similar issues over time.
The PlayStation 4 Pro is available now for $399.
Source: Digital Foundry (via Gamespot)
