Sony Brings AI Upscaling to Base PS5 With QSSR: What It Is and Which Games Support It

Sony has brought AI upscaling to the standard PlayStation 5 with QSSR, or Quick Spectral Super Resolution. Launched on October 1, it is the first time Sony’s AI-driven image reconstruction has been available outside the PS5 Pro ecosystem, almost two years after PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution debuted as a Pro exclusive.

What is QSSR?

QSSR is a slimmed-down, performance-focused tier of PSSR, the upscaler Sony built for the PS5 Pro. It was developed with AMD under Project Amethyst, Sony’s AI graphics collaboration. According to Daniel Craig, principal engineer of graphics R&D at Sony Interactive Entertainment, QSSR rests on two innovations: a streamlined neural network architecture and an implementation hand-tuned to squeeze the most performance out of the base console.

The base PS5 lacks the dedicated machine-learning hardware found in the PS5 Pro, so QSSR works around that with FP16 math, packed math instructions, and other GPU optimizations. Sony is careful not to pitch the two as equals: PSSR remains the gold standard on PS5 Pro, while QSSR brings notable improvements to image detail and stability on the standard machine.

Which games support QSSR?

Two games support QSSR today, both patched on October 1: Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei. In Marvel’s Wolverine, patch 1.002 enables QSSR as the default upscaling method on base PS5. Mike Fitzgerald, Head of Technology at Insomniac Games, says it adds pixel-level clarity and stability to environments like the busy streets of Madripoor and the alleyways of Shinjuku. In Ghost of Yotei, Sucker Punch’s Complete Edition update uses QSSR to sharpen fine environmental and character details, with lead rendering engineer Jasmin Patry saying it delivers temporal stability previously considered impossible on the base console’s hardware.

What does it cost in performance?

Sharper images are not free. Early Digital Foundry testing found that reconstructing Marvel’s Wolverine from 864p to 1440p with QSSR adds roughly 1.5 to 1.8 milliseconds of frame time compared with Insomniac’s existing upscaler, which works out to about 8 to 10 frames per second in uncapped performance mode. Pushing output to 2160p in fidelity mode raises the cost to around 4.4 milliseconds. Their testing suggests 1440p is the ideal target for the technology. Ghost of Yotei was a different story, running at roughly the same frame rate as its existing FSR 3 implementation.

What comes next?

Sony says QSSR developer tools will be offered broadly to all PlayStation studios, so support should spread well beyond these first two games. Titles that already use PSSR should need relatively little work to add QSSR, since developers can swap the implementation over and adjust settings like render resolution for the standard PS5.

Sources: Dot Esports, Wccftech