The arrival of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach on PC with new graphical upgrades highlights that the PS5 Pro version missed out on ray tracing features.
Sony positioned its mid-gen console as a premium upgrade built to push visual fidelity beyond the PS5, with the emphasis on improved ray tracing capabilities and enhanced image quality via PSSR upscaling technology. First-party titles are generally expected to lead the charge in showcasing new hardware capabilities of PlayStation hardware, and in many cases, they do. At the same time, there are some examples of PS5 Pro versions that have been left well behind by their PC counterparts. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is one such title that was marketed as one of the early showcase titles for the PS5 Pro. However, the upgrades ended up being less substantial than expected, limited to a mild resolution boost alongside Decima Engine’s own temporal upscaling solution.
The PC version of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, handled by Nixxes Software, introduces ray-traced reflections and ray-traced ambient occlusion. These additions significantly enhance environmental realism, adding more accurate lighting interactions and depth to the game’s already detailed world. Yet, the PS5 Pro will not be receiving these features. More surprisingly, the game has yet to receive support for PSSR upscaling, a key tool in freeing up GPU resources for new graphical features on the mid-gen PlayStation console.
With the improved version of PSSR, developers can render games at a lower internal resolution, such as 1080p, and upscale to a near 4K-like image while reallocating GPU resources toward more demanding features like ray tracing. This approach has already been demonstrated effectively in Resident Evil Requiem, the first game to use the latest iteration of the upscaler. The game manages to deliver ray-traced global illumination and reflections while largely maintaining a 60 fps target. In theory, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach should be able to adopt a similar strategy on PS5 Pro. However, Sony Interactive Entertainment has yet to announce anything on this front.
Returnal, developed by Housemarque, presents a similar case. Its PC version, also handled by Nixxes Software, added ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows, features that visibly elevate the game’s atmospheric sci-fi setting. Despite this, the PS5 Pro version of Returnal does not benefit from these additions, instead relying on a simple dynamic resolution boost in its upgrade patch. At the time, the available version of PSSR was known for stability issues with several Unreal Engine titles. Returnal would’ve been no different, which would explain why the developer went with a dynamic resolution configuraton in the game’s PS5 Pro update.
In the case of Returnal, the explanation is likely down to timing. With Housemarque now focused on its upcoming project, it seems unlikely that the studio will revisit its prior title for additional updates, even with the availability of PSSR2. The more capable variant of the upscaler will instead be shown off in its upcoming title, Saros. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, however, does not have the same limitation. As a recent release, the PS5 Pro version remains a prime candidate for receiving at least some of the new graphical features being introduced in the PC version by Nixxes Software.
