We didn’t expect this when sat down for our Friday evening curry: a tidbit from an upcoming Mark Cerny interview, confirming AMD’s FSR Frame Generation will come to PlayStation at some point.
In a pull quote published by Digital Foundry, hardware architect Cerny revealed that PlayStation has co-engineered the technology as part of its Project Amethyst collaboration with AMD.
He said:
“Just to clarify a few things about the collaboration with AMD, the new PSSR uses the same core co-developed algorithm as FSR Redstone’s Upscaling (to avoid confusion, I'll use the new names today rather than FSR 4).
FSR Frame Generation is also based on co-developed technology (or as my good friend [from AMD] Jack Huynh puts it, ‘co-engineered technology’). I’m very happy with how that work is progressing, and an equivalent frame generation library should be seen at some point on PlayStation platforms.”
Asked when the technology could arrive, he clarified that Sony has “no more releases planned for this year [...] and I look forward to discussing this more in the future”.
It’s possible that PlayStation may be plotting another update for the PS5 Pro next year, just as it updated PSSR this month. But realistically, with rumours pegging the PS6 for 2027, it’s likely that FSR Frame Generation will be reserved for the next-gen console.
So, what is it? Well, in layman’s terms, it’s a technology that gives the appearance of faster frame rates by inserting AI generated frames in between native ones.
This saves on processing power because the frames don’t necessarily need to be rendered by the game engine, theoretically resulting in smoother motion without the computational overhead.
It’s a similar idea to PSSR, which uses machine learning to upscale low resolution images into a clean 4K. This technology reduces the computational load, because developers can target a lower native resolution without compromising image quality.
Not everyone likes frame generation because they feel the results introduce latency and ghosting. However, the technology tends to work better at higher frame rates, like going from 60fps to 120fps, for example.
Obviously this is being co-developed by PlayStation and AMD, so you’d expect whatever version Sony implements to be the result of its research.
It sounds like we’ll need to wait until next year to learn more, though.