PlayStation 4 Pro is not a real 4K console

PlayStation 4 Pro made its big debut yesterday, and Sony is selling it as a 4K gaming box. But most of the games the company showed were not rendering a native 4K image. Instead, you were probably seeing something closer to 1440p or 1800p. That’s quite a lot less detail than 2160p — although, for the Sony’s new supersystem, it doesn’t matter.

The PS4 Pro does not have the horsepower to render native 4K. Developers are already admitting that. Guerrilla Games confirmed that it isn’t rendering Horizon: Zero Dawn, its open-world sci-fi adventure, at the 3,840 x 2160 resolution that is standard for 4K. Sony itself plainly stated yesterday during its event in Manhattan that it didn’t want to make a machine that could fill all 8 million pixels of a 4K television set.