PS5 architect mostly interested in using AI for graphics and gameplay performance

Sony is all-in on machine learning technology, and wants to use AI and ML to help transform its lucrative PlayStation platform.

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Although it has a variety of top-tier studios that have sold tens of millions of games, Sony is a platform-holder first and a game-maker second. This means Sony must always innovate and provide new tools to help make developers' jobs easier. It behooves Sony to optimize the game development process, and it does so through a mixture of organic means via its first-party studios who rigorously test new hardware and technologies like PlayStation Spectral Resolution (PSSR) upscaling, and inorganic means through feedback from external third-party publishers, developers, and partners.

That's the main impetus for the PlayStation 5 Pro. The mid-gen console is meant to help ease the burden that developers face when making games, namely in the constraints of the age-old struggle of resolution vs performance. Sony did this by adding in a variety of new tools and technologies that devs can use, including PSSR, which allows for unique enhancement opportunities that devs can scale for their specific games/in-game sequences. Then there's the hardware-based modifications like the +67% beefier GPU, new shader core modifications with ML instruction sets, and an extra 1GB of GDDR5 RAM specifically meant to house the PS5 Pro's OS.

While Sony went out of its way to facilitate PSSR and new raytracing tech, going so far as to completely customize and design the PS5 Pro's GPU, console architect Mark Cerny says he is mostly interested in using AI to tackle graphics. We shouldn't expect to see big gen AI shifts through Sony's aspirations. Sony and AMD recently partnered together in a collab codenamed Amethyst, which will help bring next-gen AI tech to games. For Sony, this basically means better PSSR iterations, higher quality training sources, and potentially better hardware iterations indirectly with AMD's help.

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In a recent interview with IGN, Cerny underlines Sony's position on AI and how the company went through great lengths to allow big upgrades like PSSR through hardware-based modifications. Cerny goes on to say that he is confident that ML/AI tech like PSSR will help drive the next generation of gaming.

"One very simple way to look at this is: are we taking the next roadmap AMD technology, or are we, in fact, going in and trying to design the circuitry ourselves - and we chose the latter. And we chose the latter because we really wanted to start working in the space ourselves.

"It was clear that the future was very ML-driven. And by that, you know, the world's talking about LLMs and generative AI, but I'm really mostly just looking at game graphics and the boost for game graphics we can get. So, based on that, we wanted to be working in that space."

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During an extensive 37-minute technical deep dive on the PS5 Pro, console architect Mark Cerny also said that Super Resolution upscaling like PSSR can be a huge benefit for developers. "It's a world where internal rendering resolution is not the primary concern."

Lower internal rendering targets gives developers more room to use those freed up resources for other things, further optimizing development and the end-user visual/gameplay experience.

PSSR isn't perfect, and it's causing issues in some PlayStation games, but Sony is committed on iterating on this new technology and will continue to train its neural network on new games data as time goes by.

Read Also: PS5 Pro GPU explained by architect Mark Cerny: Hybrid GPU with multi-generational RDNA tech