After some fans expressed concern about the performance of ambitious new open world game Crimson Desert on consoles, we finally have a look at the game on a PlayStation 5 Pro.
The reveal comes courtesy of the tech wizards at Digital Foundry, whose John Linneman sounded enamoured with what he called “a stunning game.” The game’s ray tracing features are fully present on the Pro, and the water looks lovely indeed.
Digital Foundry said its counts confirm the PS5 Pro targets outlined by Crimson Desert developer and publisher Pearl Abyss below, but it’s reserving judgment for the final release. Performance Mode “puts up a good fight,” Linneman said, and “by and large” the 60fps target is maintained. “I was surprised by how good it was overall,” he added.
Crimson Desert on console! An extended look at the near-final game running on PlayStation 5 Pro, covering all graphics modes. And one of my favourite video intros I’ve seen from the channel! https://t.co/jCcap1oa7s pic.twitter.com/xLrxVi8WEm
— Digital Foundry (@digitalfoundry) March 12, 2026
DF found the frame rate drops amid larger crowds, anything involving tonnes of NPCs or enemies, with occasional dips also in quieter spots. The frame rate dropped “significantly” during a big early battle, slipping all the way into the 30s. You can trigger similar results in some of the game’s large cities, too. But, Linneman stressed, this is “not the norm at all.” The 30fps and 40fps modes are more stable overall. Linneman recommends the 40fps or 60fps modes because the 30fps mode feels less responsive than he would have liked, but he thinks this “heavy” gameplay feel is a design choice.
Now, it’s worth noting that we still haven’t seen Crimson Desert running on base consoles, including the less powerful Xbox Series S. Digital Foundry notes this in its video. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see how Crimson Desert runs on base consoles soon.
Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter told IGN: “We’ve not seen much of Crimson Desert on consoles, but when Pearl Abyss offered us the chance to take a look at the PS5 Pro version with no limitations on what we could cover, we jumped at the chance. My main concern was not so much about graphics but on demands on the CPU. Yes, it can be demanding, but overall performance across the three modes is impressive. But more impressive is really what this game is about — the scale and the scope and the systems-driven open world. The high-end PC experience scales well to PS5 Pro and we’re looking forward to seeing the other console versions.”
Earlier this week, Pearl Abyss detailed how the Crimson Desert will run on consoles just over a week before its launch date. As you’d expect, there’s a wide range of performance benchmarks across the console spectrum, from the lesser-powered Xbox Series S right up to the beefy PlayStation 5 Pro.
For each machine, including the base PS5 and Xbox Series X, the developer has also included details for up to three modes (Performance, Balanced and Quality), and there are details of both resolution and “target performance” in terms of frame rate, as well as the quality of raytracing enabled.
The console versions of Crimson Desert have recently come under scrutiny, with Pearl Abyss accused by some fans online of hiding the game’s PlayStation and Xbox versions prior to launch — something that has sparked fears of Cyberpunk 2077-style debacle, where the game’s lesser-powered and buggy console versions were not shown at all before release.
Last week, however, a spokesperson for the highly-anticipated open-world action game begged fans to “let us cook” and show the console version when it was ready — even though we are now just days from the game’s arrival.
“We’re not hiding anything, and I’m sick of having to repeat myself,” Pearl Abyss spokesperson Will Powers said at the time. “I’ve repeated 100s of times that we’ll reveal things ahead of launch to give people adequate time to still preorder the game for themselves. We’re saying this openly… Let us cook? Please and thank you. /rant”
Last month, Powers said the developers at Pearl Abyss were doubling down on the “optimization phase” in a bid to get performance as smooth as possible across all platforms ahead of Crimson Desert’s release date. Crimson Desert is due out March 19 priced $69.99. Pearl Abyss recently confirmed it does not contain a cosmetic cash shop nor microtransactions of any kind.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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