Sony Unveils QSSR, a New AI Upscaling Tier for the Standard PS5

Sony Interactive Entertainment on October 1, 2026 unveiled Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new performance tier of AI upscaling for the standard PlayStation 5, in an official PlayStation Blog announcement. Developed through the company’s Project Amethyst graphics collaboration with AMD, the library debuted the same day in patches for Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei, the first titles to use it.

Two Innovations Behind the New Tier

Daniel Craig, Principal Engineer of Graphics R&D at Sony Interactive Entertainment, described QSSR in the announcement as an evolution of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), the AI upscaling library that launched on PS5 Pro. According to Craig, the library rests on two key innovations: a streamlined neural network architecture, and an implementation hand-tuned to maximize performance on the standard console.

According to Sony, PSSR analyzes game images pixel by pixel and uses AI to upscale them with more detail and stability than conventional approaches. Since the library’s debut on PS5 Pro, players and developers had asked whether similar image-quality improvements could be brought to the PS5 console, but its computational demands had made that impossible until now.

Sony drew a distinction between the two libraries. PSSR remains “the gold standard on PS5 Pro,” the company said, while QSSR provides what it described as notable improvements to both image detail and image stability on the standard PS5.

First Games Patched With QSSR

The first titles to use the QSSR library are Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Wolverine and Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Yōtei. Both games were patched on October 1, 2026 to offer QSSR as an additional graphics option on PS5.

Mike Fitzgerald, Head of Technology at Insomniac Games, said his team works to make each of its games a showcase of PlayStation hardware and that the studio was excited for Marvel’s Wolverine to be among the first titles to bring QSSR to players. He said the library adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to the game’s environments, pointing to the busy streets of Madripoor and the dense alleyways of Shinjuku across Logan’s journey, and said it brings a sample of the PS5 Pro experience to players on the standard console. Fitzgerald added that he was glad to see PlayStation’s technology teams continue improving the PS5 platform and looked forward to more games making use of QSSR.

Jasmin Patry, Lead Rendering Engineer at Sucker Punch Productions, said the studio was excited to bring QSSR to Ghost of Yōtei players so they can experience its world with even more clarity and detail. Patry said QSSR excels at resolving fine details in characters and environments with “a level of temporal stability that hasn’t been possible on the PS5 console until now.” The studio had long wished all PS5 players could experience the image quality PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, Patry said, calling QSSR a positive step toward that goal.

Project Amethyst Lineage

QSSR follows earlier upscaling releases from the same Sony–AMD collaboration. On February 27, 2026, Mark Cerny, Lead Architect of PS5 and PS5 Pro, announced on the PlayStation Blog that an upgraded version of PSSR would roll out globally to PS5 Pro players in the following weeks. PSSR is an AI library that analyzes game images pixel by pixel as it upscales them, Cerny wrote, and it had been used to boost the effective resolution of over 50 titles on PS5 Pro to that date.

The upgraded PSSR took a very different approach to both the neural network and the overall algorithm, according to Cerny, and both the algorithm and the neural network stem from the Project Amethyst partnership with AMD. PC gamers had already seen the benefits of the collaboration through AMD’s FSR 4 upscaling technology, and the updated PSSR delivered the latest of the co-developed technology with a further six months of refinement for PS5 Pro players.

Resident Evil Requiem, which shipped the day of Cerny’s announcement, was the first title to use the more advanced PSSR, which Cerny said was helping to keep both frame rate and image quality high. Masaru Ijuin, a senior manager in Capcom’s engine development support section, said the upgraded library successfully processed intricate details that are traditionally difficult to upscale, such as individually rendered strands of hair that move in response to body motion and wind.

Cerny also said that more news would follow in March 2026, when multiple existing games would upgrade to the improved PSSR, alongside a system software update. Once that update arrived, he wrote, selecting the Enhance PSSR Image Quality setting on PS5 Pro would apply the new PSSR to any PS5 Pro games that already support it.

Sony said QSSR will be offered broadly to all PlayStation developers and that it expects to see the improvements in many more titles going forward.