PlayStation 4 Pro owners will remember that games with improvements to take advantage of the superior hardware would come with a “PS4 Pro Enhanced” badge on the box. This would indicate higher resolutions on compatible TVs or smoother frame rates on older HD models.
With the rumored upcoming PS5 Pro, it seems that Sony will be doing something similar. Insider Gaming not only claims that Sony is prepping a “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label, but reveals what games need to do to be eligible for one.
Known internally as “Trinity Enhanced,” Sony ideally wants qualifying games to offer three things, according to the site. The first is “constant 60fps” gameplay, which plenty of games offer now, but often only when set to a “Performance Mode” with weaker graphics.
That’s where the second and third points come in. To qualify for the PS5 Pro Enhanced status, games will apparently also need a 4K resolution (achieved by PSSR upscaling) and to “add or increase ray tracing effects.”
Alternatively, the site adds that the PS5 Pro Enhanced badge might also be granted for games that simply boost resolution (variable or fixed) or frame rate over the standard console.
This alternative path to Enhanced status may be important for games that are already pushing the limits of console hardware. Based on previously leaked specifications, the hardware analysis site Digital Foundry is dubious that the upcoming GTA 6 will be able to reach 60fps on PS5 Pro hardware if the base version comes in at 30fps, for example.
For Digital Foundry, the bottleneck from the leaked specs is the CPU, which is reportedly the same as found in the current PS5 only with a high-frequency mode to deliver 10% more clock speed.
Elsewhere, the purported performance increases are more dramatic with a rumored 45% faster rendering, up to 4x the ray-tracing performance and memory speed boosted from 448GBs to 576GBs.
Current reports point to a launch in the latter part of the year, with both September and November suggested as possible windows.
