Sony confirms AMD's FSR 4 is coming to PlayStation in 2026

With the launch of PlayStation 5 Pro, Sony's mid-generation refresh introduced a more powerful version of the popular console, and the addition of dedicated ML or AI hardware led to the arrival of PSSR. Sony's new upscaling technology, which stands for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, offers a massive improvement to image fidelity compared to previous solutions - including the console versions of AMD's FSR technology.

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AMD's FSR 4 for RDNA 4 GPUs is a game changer for the company's upscaling tech, image credit: AMD.

Since the debut of PSSR, we've learned that Sony worked closely with AMD to fine-tune the AI capabilities of the PS5 Pro specifically for ray-tracing and upscaling. Now, with the arrival of RDNA 4 and the new Radeon RX 9070 Series, PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny has confirmed that the impressive new FSR 4 was the result of a collaboration between AMD and Sony that already exceeds the quality you get with PSSR.

The good news for PlayStation gamers, especially those with a PS5 Pro, is that Sony is set to use the AI models and technology that serve as the foundation of FSR 4 and implement them into the next iteration of PSSR.

"Our target is to have something very similar to FSR 4's upscaler available on PS5 Pro for 2026 titles as the next evolution of PSSR," Mark Cerny told Digital Foundry in a new interview. "It should take the same inputs and produce essentially the same outputs. Doing that implementation is rather ambitious and time consuming, which is why you haven't already seen this new upscaler on PS5 Pro."

FSR 4 on PC is currently exclusive to RDNA 4 GPUs, specifically the new Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT - two GPUs with beefier specs and hardware than what's found inside the PlayStation 5 Pro. FSR 4 on PC is significantly more costly to run (computationally) than FSR 3.1, but Mark Cerny believes that it can be ported to the PS5 Pro's AI hardware without having to spend a lot of time rebuilding it.

"RDNA 4 and the hardware in PS5 Pro are completely separate designs, which is why I speak in terms of 'reimplementation' on PS5 Pro when I talk about the new upscaling network used in FSR 4," Mark Cerny confirms. "And there may be slight tweaks to them in our world, as technical targets for console game development and PC game development tend to be slightly different. For example - as I said in the PS5 Pro technical video in December - 60 frames per second gaming is very important in the console world, but the PC world doesn't quite think about frame-rate the same way."

Mark Cerny also confirms that his team and AMD have been closely collaborating on ML and AI for games graphics since late 2023, and that there are long-term plans for the two companies to continue this collaboration. This means FSR4 or even FSR 5 will be baked into the design of the upcoming PlayStation 6.