What Are They, And How Do They Work?
Among the PlayStation 4 games that Illusion has gotten to run at 60 frames per second on a modded PlayStation 5 are “Red Dead Redemption 2,” “DriveClub,” “Batman: Arkham Knight,” “Just Cause 3,” “Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy,” and “Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled.” The Eurogamer article notes that one reason that these titles haven’t seen official updates to unlock this potential is that the games needed to be converted to newer Sony development kits for the PS4 games to take full advantage of the PS5’s horsepower, but developers moved on to newer development hardware incompatible with the older games.
What Illusion has done is comparable to one of the options that Microsoft provided for its “FPS Boost” mode on the Xbox Series X for Xbox One games, turning off system-level caps of 30 frames per second on games that would benefit with minimal friction. The PS5 has a trio of compatibility profiles for PS4 games, and they don’t always jibe with what a particular game is capable of: A CPU boost, what’s effectively a PS4 Pro clone with additional CPU and GPU clocks, and a “last resort” that runs the game as if it was on a standard PS4. Eurogamer cites “Assassin’s Creed Unity” as an example of a game that, thanks to the limitations of these profiles, couldn’t run at a steady 60 fps on the PS5 while it could on the rival Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles.
In the meantime, though, unless someone can convince Sony to implement these changes themselves, you will only be able to unlock them on a modded PS5 that can’t go online.
