DF Direct Q+A: Is PS5 QSSR Really A Game-Changer? Will Xbox Series X|S Get ML Upscaling?

Rich Leadbetter (0:02)

Well, hello there, and welcome to the latest edition of the DF Direct Q&A show. By my reckoning, we've answered questions across 284 different shows now.

And we're not stopping anytime soon. Lots of interest this week in QSSR, Qissa, as it's being referred to by some people. Join me to discuss that and other topics. First of all, Oliver McKenzie, hello.

Oliver McKenzie (0:25)

Yes, Rich, 284 numbered episodes and undoubtedly many more unnumbered episodes and non-direct videocasts of some form or other. There's certainly been quite a few of them. But yeah, excited to get to this one today.

Rich Leadbetter (0:39)

Absolutely. And of course, John Lineman, hello.

John Linneman (0:42)

Rich, yes, I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate something here. The last month of games, there's all this... When I actually sat back and looked at some of this stuff, it's honestly absurd how good things are. I mean, kicking off, we had Onimusha, like a long-awaited sequel to that series and it was amazing. We've got arguably one of the best Fire Emblem games ever made.

We got a new Remedy game, which doesn't happen often, a brand new Silent Hill that's actually really good as well. We've got Return of the King, Ace Combat 8

We've got essentially like the spiritual successor to Burnout and Motorstorm mixed with Star Wars and Galactic Racer. We've got a new Gears game and arguably one of the best ever.

Trails in the Sky second chapter came out and a whole bunch more. It's honestly just like it's the more I think about it, the more I think it's like a legendary year in terms of game releases. We've had a strong beginning. This last month has been crazy good. There's still GTA 6 and others on the way. This is going to go down, I think, as one of the best years for game releases. Maybe not game industry as a whole, but in terms of the actual quality of the games, especially for someone has been playing games for a long time. It's been a great year. So I just wanted to appreciate that for a moment.

Rich Leadbetter (2:02)

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, cramming them all into September has been extremely challenging from our perspective. But you've got to applaud the effort that's going into these games and the quality of them. And man, well, things aren't going to start slowing down now, I guess, in the run up to GTA 6 So hopefully we can catch our breath a little. And hopefully users out there can actually enjoy more of those games and buy more of them. Because, you know, cramming them all together in one month. Holy crap. It's going to strain anyone's wallet, isn't it?

But we're here for questions and answers. Let's get on with it. But first, this.

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OK, so we're going to kick off with a question from Lexington87. Hello gents, was QSSR worth the R&D, do we think, because of the massive delay in next generation consoles, or would this have happened anyway? And this was followed up by Keaton. I'm quite curious about this as well. Is QSSR a method of prolonging the PS5, perhaps hopefully wait out the memory crisis, something I personally feel needs to happen? Or is this just as Sony said, a nice side effect of Project Amethyst? Bit of a wall of text here from Marcus, but it's good stuff so I'm going to plough through it. Hi, a Foundryman, the announcement of QSSR makes me wonder whether the PS5 could remain a major target platform for much longer than previous console generations. We could end up with something of a continuum. PS5 is the baseline, PS5 Pro offering better image reconstruction and RT, and PS6 adding a much faster CPU, much stronger RT, and further machine learning improvements. Do you think we could reach a point where there almost isn't a traditional quote unquote next-gen game anymore? Instead of eventually cutting off the old generation, developers could keep scaling the same games across increasingly wide hardware ranges with newer machines spending their extra performance on things like higher frame rates, better reconstruction, heavier RT, and even path tracing. We're already seeing something similar on PC where remarkably old GPUs remain in minimum specifications. GTX 10 Series card, particularly the 1070 class, still turn up surprisingly often. Could the future effectively be extremely long-lived baseline hardware with almost unlimited scalability above it?