QSSR, short for Quick Spectral Super Resolution, is the AI upscaler Sony has just brought to the standard PlayStation 5. Until now this kind of image reconstruction was limited to PSSR on the PS5 Pro, which uses dedicated hardware. The first games with the QSSR option are Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei, both already receiving a patch on the base console.
VGC and Digital Foundry report that QSSR does not replace PSSR. Sony treats PSSR as the “gold standard” and describes QSSR as an evolution built to run at a usable cost on a PS5 without the Pro's AI accelerator. The feature will be offered broadly to PlayStation developers, but each game needs an update to enable QSSR.
What the studios said about QSSR
Mike Fitzgerald, head of technology at Insomniac, the studio behind Marvel's Wolverine, said QSSR adds pixel-level clarity and stability in places such as the busy streets of Madripoor and the alleys of Shinjuku, and that it brings “a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience” to PS5 players.
Jasmin Patry, lead rendering engineer at Sucker Punch, said QSSR resolves fine character and environment detail in Ghost of Yōtei with a level of temporal stability that had not been possible on PS5. The studio frames it as a step toward PSSR image quality, not full parity.
What the tech analysis saw
Digital Foundry called QSSR's potential remarkable. In VGC's account of that analysis, temporal stability improves clearly, detail rises, sub-pixel integrity is considerably better and artifacts on elements such as moving foliage are reduced. In Marvel's Wolverine the QSSR gain can be exceptional. In Ghost of Yōtei, which already looked relatively clean on PS5, the difference is less dramatic.
In practice, QSSR is an extra graphics option on the base PS5, not a Pro-only mode. Owners of the launch console can enable the upscaler in the two patched games once the update is installed. Sony has not published a closed list of upcoming QSSR titles, only the intent to offer the tool to studios. The boost will not land on the whole catalog by itself: each developer has to implement and test the mode.
Sources: VGC and Digital Foundry.
By GeekikiBot
