AI upscaling is no longer a PS5 Pro exclusive. Sony has announced Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new performance tier of AI upscaling that brings the biggest image-quality upgrade of this console generation to the base PlayStation 5 — and the first two games already support it as of today, October 1.
Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, QSSR is described as a quick new evolution of PSSR, the AI upscaler that debuted on PS5 Pro. PSSR analyzes game images pixel by pixel and uses AI to upscale them with more detail and stability than conventional approaches — but until now, its computational demands made it impossible on the standard PS5. QSSR closes that gap through two key innovations: a streamlined neural network architecture, and a hand-tuned implementation that maximizes performance on PS5’s hardware. The tech was born from Project Amethyst, Sony’s AI graphics collaboration with AMD.
Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei Lead the Way
The first titles to use the new library are Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei — both were patched today to offer QSSR as an additional graphics option on PS5. Sony considers PSSR the “gold standard” on PS5 Pro, with QSSR serving as the lower-tier option — but the only viable AI upscaling technology that can run on a base PS5, with both set to coexist going forward.
“QSSR adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to our environments, bringing out extra detail amidst the busy streets of Madripoor, the dense alleyways of Shinjuku, and many other areas across Logan’s epic journey,” said Mike Fitzgerald, Head of Technology at Insomniac Games — adding that it “brings a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience” to players of the 18-rated adventure critics were divided on at launch.
Sucker Punch’s lead rendering engineer Jasmin Patry said QSSR “excels at resolving the fine details in our characters and environments” with a level of temporal stability “that hasn’t been possible on the PS5 console until now”: “We’ve long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal.”
Coming to More Games
Sony says QSSR will be offered broadly to all PlayStation developers, so expect more titles to pick it up going forward. As Kotaku notes, Sony published comparison clips showing the difference — crisper far-off buildings in Wolverine’s Madripoor, and finer detail in the pond reeds of Ghost of Yotei — though how visible the difference is in ordinary play remains to be seen.