One of the debated topics surround PS4 Pro since its initial unveiling on Wednesday has been if the powerful new console has the ability to run games at native 4K. For those not quite familiar, every game that’s PS4 Pro Enhanced will run at 4K but some of it will be through upscaling. Now this is very different than what Xbox One S is doing which is just upsampling 1080p games; PS4 Pro games will run at a much higher resolution. But can the console actually drive native 4K gaming?

Richard Leadbetter from Digital Foundry:

 The Last of Us Remastered “clearly wasn’t running at native 4K on the demo they were showing. They could do the HDR toggles on/off, they could turn off and turn on 1080p and yeah, you could see the difference there. But it was actually talking to the developer that things really became interesting. 

Seems like no, right? Not so fast, it seems.

 The PS4 version has that 30Hz mode which has higher-resolution shadow maps but otherwise it’s just a locked 30fps. Now that mode on the PS4 Pro, well you keep the enhanced shadow map detail but you also get native 4K. So we have actually got a confirmed case of full native 4K game that will be available for PS4 Pro at launch, which will be The Last of Us Remastered. 

I’ll save my arguments for another piece but I think the fact that PS4 Pro won’t run all of its games at native 4K doesn’t really matter. If you see how PS4 Pro games can look and you’re willing to put the number games aside, you’d be hard pressed to not walk away impressed. Still, it’s good to know that the console is powerful enough to run games at native 4K though there will be obvious tradeoffs like lack of HDR.

Ultimately, I don’t think native 4K games will be the norm and instead will be the exception as depending on the game and FPS, the devs will likely favor improved resolution (though not native 4K) with 60fps over just hitting the magical 3840 x 2160 pixels (also known as “2160p”) resolution. But really, I implore you to not care about the exact resolution and if it claims it’s 4K or 4K HDR, just take it that it is because seeing a game like Horizon or Spider-Man on PS4 Pro is something else.

Discuss:

Do you care if it a game is running at native 4K or as long as it looks better, that’s what matters?

[Via PSU]