At E3 2017 Sony showed off a good chunk of new Spider-Man gameplay, and it certainly looks like the game aims to push the PlayStation 4 Pro to its limit. In fact, it sounds like Spider-Man may push the system beyond its limits. Over the past couple days fans have been peppering Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games with technical questions, and their responses have been somewhat disappointing. For instance, one fan asked whether Spider-Man will run at a native 4K and 60fps on the PS4 Pro.
4K via temporal injection, 30 fps
โ Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 18, 2017
For those not up on the latest tech jargon, “temporal injection” is a way up uprezing a game from 1080p to 4K, which is said to be slightly better than the usual “checkerboarding” method. Obviously though, it isn’t as good as a game actually being rendered in 4K to begin with. Another fan asked whether it might be possible to bump Spider-Man down to 1080p, but play at 60fps. Apparently, the PS4 Pro just can’t handle it:
Videos by ComicBook.com
nope, not really an option there. We will optimize for best experience on PS4 and PS4 Pro.
โ Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 18, 2017
Say what you want about the necessity of the Xbox One X, but it seems like developers are already bumping up against the limits of what’s possible on the PS4 Pro. I’m usually not a huge tech head, but with a game that’s all about fluid action like Spider-Man, a 30fps limit is kind of a drag.
But it wasn’t all bad news from Insomniac. They also revealed a couple extra tidbits about how Spider-Man will play, including the fact that it will have first-person segments, and that there’s a lot more depth to the game’s combat than we’ve seen. Hmmm, suddenly I’m envisioning shooting down baddies with web fluid FPS-style…
We use it at certain moments
โ Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 17, 2017
we are just scratching the surface
โ Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 18, 2017
Spider-Man swings exclusively onto PS4 sometime within the first half of 2018.
[via WCCF Tech]