PS5’s first 8K 60fps game has arrived

The PlayStation 5 officially has its first ever 8K 60fps game, despite the fact the console doesn’t yet support the resolution.

The Touryst, which originally launched on the Switch in 2019 and was then released on PC and Xbox consoles in 2020, came to PS4 and PS5 in September.

Following discussions with the game’s developer, though, Digital Foundry discovered that the PS5 version renders internally at 7680×4320, or 8K resolution.

According to developer Shin’en, this isn’t achieved through super-sampling, checkerboarding or any type of AI upscaling, and is a fully native 8K.

The problem at the moment is that despite it appearing on the PlayStation 5’s packaging since launch, the console doesn’t actually support 8K output yet.

As such, while the game does render at native 8K, it then downsamples this to a sharp 4K image.

Shin’en says the Xbox Series X version also renders at a higher resolution than 4K. It renders at 6K 60fps and is then downsampled to 4K for similar results, though the PS5 version features improved shadows and depth-of-field effects.

The developer told Digital Foundry that when Sony finally does activate 8K output on the PS5 with a system update in the future, all Shin’en has to do is release a small patch to activate the 8K version of the game.

Sony started branding TVs that support 8K and 120 fps as “PS5 ready” as early as July 2020, and the PlayStation 5’s packaging displays an 8K logo next to 4K 120 and HDR logos.

Despite this, nearly 11 months into the console’s lifespan, the PS5 can’t output a signal any larger than 4K resolution.

A large FAQ released on the PlayStation Blog shortly before the PS5 launch stated: “PS5 is compatible with 8K displays at launch, and after a future system software update will be able to output resolutions up to 8K when content is available, with supported software.”