Performance analysis of Crimson Desert running on PS5 Pro is dividing opinion on social media because although some agree the signs are incredibly promising on the upgraded console, others are still questioning how the game will run on a base PS5.
Crimson Desert is an open-world action role-playing game from Pearl Abyss, which is best known for its MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Black Desert Online. It's the studio's highly-anticipated first single-player game and was designed to be a prequel to Black Desert before eventually becoming a standalone title.
The vast majority of Crimson Desert gameplay that's readily available online is from the PC build of the game with console footage very scarce.
This has caused skepticism that console performance could be questionable leading to a similar situation with what we saw with Cyberpunk 2077's launch (which CD Projekt Red worked tirelessly on to turn around).
Some of those fears were alleviated when Pearl Abyss revealed the console and PC specs for Crimson Desert after saying it had giventech experts at Digital Foundry access to the game on PS5 Pro for "fair analysis".
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Digital Foundry has now published the first part of its analysis and found "the signs are looking good - and certainly for PS5 Pro owners, Crimson Desert delivers a phenomenal experience", even on a build of the game without a day one patch and using the older version of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, which is an AI library that analyses game images pixel by pixel as it upscales them).
Indeed, in the deep dive video, PS5 Pro performance is shown to be impressive on the whole. There are moments where frame rates dip into the 30s when targeting 60fps (frames per second) but this is only in incredibly intensive areas and seemingly quite rare.
The publication interestingly noted Pearl Abyss gave Digital Foundry a PS5 Pro console with Crimson Desert preloaded.
Usually, studios and publishers give out download codes but it seems here Pearl Abyss did not want Digital Foundry trying to check the game out on a base PS5.
And this is why opinion has been split online. The PS5 Pro version of the game certainly sounds promising but still with no detailed base PS5 performance information available, this is still causing some to be hesitant.
To note, the Xbox Series X version of the game has the same specs as the base PS5 with Xbox Series S having even lesser specs than this.
On a post about this in the Crimson Desert Subreddit, one said: "Honestly looks insane. PC version should be super optimised."
"So from what I've gathered, performance is actually really good aside from that one bug hill area on performance mode," a second noted. "Balanced and quality looked really stable from the look of it."
And a third commented: "So happy I got a Pro when it came out. Seems like it's finally starting to pay off."
But on the other side of this, one said: "As a certified poor, I really need to know how this is going to run on the base PS5."
"I hope we get base PS5 info from them soon," a second agreed.
And a third commented: "Still anxiously waiting for the base PS5 deep dive."
Crimson Desert releases on 19 March on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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