Crimson Desert on consoles raises questions; Digital Foundry is waiting for a copy of the game

Not a single editorial outlet globally has been granted access to the console version of the game. This has been confirmed by the experts at Digital Foundry, who noted in a recent video that console review code is still a subject of negotiation with the publisher. As it stands, there is no guarantee that technical coverage for the console editions will be available by the launch date.

It is now evident that console-specific reviews will be missing from the initial wave of coverage. The developers, widely recognized for their work on Black Desert, have historically favored the PC market. This focus is largely driven by the landscape of the South Korean gaming industry, where PC titles enjoy significantly more dominance than their console counterparts.

The revealed technical specifications for the console versions have also sparked concern. On the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the 60 FPS performance mode is reportedly locked to 1080p without any upscaling to 4K. If these details are accurate, the image quality in high-framerate mode may appear noticeably soft or blurry. 4K upscaling is supposedly reserved for the 30 or 40 FPS modes using FSR 3.

The only console currently listed as capable of 4K upscaling at 60 FPS is the PS5 Pro. This is achieved through PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), which reconstructs the final image from a native 1080p base.

Against this backdrop, a segment of the community is growing apprehensive about potential optimization hurdles. Many are drawing unsettling parallels to the Cyberpunk 2077 launch on PS4, where only PC footage was made available to reviewers pre-release. Under these circumstances, the prevailing advice is to wait for independent performance benchmarks before committing to a purchase.

An editor from Digital Foundry commented:

Source: iXBT.games