After two years as a PS5 Pro exclusive, AI upscaling is coming to the standard PS5 today. On October 1, Sony officially announced QSSR (Quick Spectral Super Resolution) on the PlayStation Blog, a new AI upscaling tier exclusive to the standard PS5. QSSR originates from Project Amethyst and can significantly improve image detail and stability, while PSSR remains the highest standard on PS5 Pro. At launch, it supports two games, Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei, which are being updated today.
What is QSSR?
The author of this announcement is Daniel Craig, Principal Engineer in Graphics R&D at Sony Interactive Entertainment. He wrote that since PSSR debuted on PS5 Pro, players and developers have kept asking whether the same image-quality improvements could be brought to the standard PS5. PSSR analyzes the game image pixel by pixel and then uses AI to upscale it, preserving more detail and offering more stability than traditional methods, but its compute requirements had made this impossible. QSSR is a new performance tier created to solve this problem, born from Project Amethyst, Sony and AMD’s AI graphics collaboration, and is a lightweight evolution of PSSR built on two key innovations: a streamlined neural network architecture and an implementation hand-tuned for PS5 performance. These two approaches bring the benefits of AI-driven upscaling to PS5.
PlayStation announced AI upscaling is coming to base PS5 with new “QSSR” (Quick Spectral Super Resolution)
– New performance tier of AI upscaling
– Born from Project Amethyst
– QSSR provides notable improvements to image detail and stability on PS5
– PSSR remains the gold… pic.twitter.com/u8flm60W8Z— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) October 1, 2026
PSSR remains the gold standard for PS5 Pro, while QSSR brings significant improvements in visual detail and stability to the standard PS5. In other words, QSSR is an upgrade meant to outperform the previous approach on PS5, not magic that lets the older console catch up to the Pro. The official announcement also released two comparison videos: one showing distant buildings in Marvel’s Wolverine, where QSSR preserves more detail in small objects, and the other showing characters and scenes in Ghost of Yotei, where temporal stability is noticeably improved. In the announcement, Sony separates their positioning: PSSR is the Pro’s flagship solution, while QSSR is a standalone tool tailored to the hardware ceiling of the older console. The Pro has about two-thirds more compute units and nearly 30% faster memory bandwidth, so PSSR can afford to run heavier networks and reconstruct closer to native 4K, while QSSR is hand-tuned within the older console’s fixed GPU budget.
The third fruit of Project Amethyst
QSSR is the third public result of this Sony-AMD collaboration line. PSSR debuted with the PS5 Pro and was already being used for effective resolution boosts in more than 50 games at launch. On February 27 this year, PS5 and PS5 Pro lead architect Mark Cerny announced on the PlayStation Blog that an upgraded PSSR was rolling out to Pro players worldwide, taking a completely different approach to the neural network and the overall algorithm; both stem from Project Amethyst. PC players had already gotten a taste of the same collaboration through AMD FSR 4, meaning that half a year later, the latest co-developed technology was being added to the Pro. QSSR turns that same R&D energy in another direction: no longer chasing peak image quality, but letting more than 60 million older consoles get AI upscaling too.
The timing is spot-on, too. The PS5 has entered the latter stage of its lifecycle, Sony’s updates in recent years have mostly revolved around the Pro, and standard-model owners have grown increasingly resentful. This time, by bringing AI upscaling down to the base model, Sony is effectively telling older-console users that the platform is still investing in them. The Australian outlet Press Start’s report headline directly reads “Standard PS5 Gets QSSR AI Upscaling Similar to Pro Technology,” pointing out that this is exactly the message most players want to hear. Beebom also confirmed that QSSR is offered on the standard PS5 as an additional graphics mode, which players can toggle on and off themselves.
The two launch games are getting updated today.
First up are Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yōtei, both of which received updates on October 1, adding QSSR as a new graphics option on PS5. Wolverine’s version 1.002 update enables QSSR by default on PS5. The same version also includes fixes for UI, Photo Mode, out-of-bounds detection, and visual polish, addresses progression blockers and crashes experienced by a small number of players, and fixes accessibility features including navigation assist, lock-on, high contrast, and screen reader, plus multilingual localization fixes. Insomniac technical director Mike Fitzgerald said: “Our team works to make every game a showcase for PlayStation hardware, and I’m delighted that Marvel’s Wolverine is among the first titles to bring QSSR to players. QSSR brings more pixel-level clarity and stability to scenes, whether it’s the busy streets of Madripoor, the narrow alleys of Shinjuku, or other scenes in Logan’s epic journey, it brings out more detail. It’s a perfect companion to Wolverine’s launch and gives PS5 players a taste of the PS5 Pro experience. I personally am glad to see the PlayStation technology team continue improving the PS5 platform and look forward to more games adopting QSSR.”
Who’s next?
At the end of its announcement, Sony promised that QSSR will be made fully available to all PlayStation developers, and more games will follow. More first-party games are expected to be added through updates over the coming weeks and months. Based on the precedent set by PSSR, after the upgraded version was released, supported games started at more than 50, and QSSR, being on the same path, is expected to replicate that rate of adoption. The only practical advice for players is this: check your settings to see whether any of your games has gained an extra graphics option, and if it has, turn it on and try it—the visuals on older consoles may be noticeably better than you remember.
Source: KOCPC Chinese