Opinion: The demand for support for 1440p mode on PS5 is clear, so why don’t we have it yet?
It’s been almost six months since the launch of the PS5, but there are still no signs of 1440p mode support for Sony’s latest console.
A new PS5 update was released on April 14 that brought some welcome changes to the PlayStation user interface and some much-needed additional features for the system, such as being able to save PS5 games to an external USB hard drive. There were a few surprises too, like being able to disable HDR for games that don’t support it, and an easy way to enable 120Hz support on the PS5.
However, it’s annoying that Sony is still reluctant to unlock support for the PS5’s internal M.2 SSD port, meaning users still only have 667GB of usable storage space on the PS5 to use. play PS5 titles for the foreseeable future. But the other big absence in the April PS5 update that seems a lot simpler to implement, and that is support for 1440p. Where is?
1440p is an increasingly common resolution and is possibly the standard now for most monitor manufacturers and PC gamers. Therefore, there are a large number of users who will connect their PlayStation 5 console to a monitor, especially streamers. But unless you have a 4K screen, the PS5 defaults to 1080p output, albeit reduced.
That means that those who play on a 1440p screen lose 78% more pixels due to having to play in 1080p, which is not at all acceptable considering that both the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S allow Playback users at 1440p. In fact, Xbox One added 1440p support in 2018. Three years later, Sony has yet to bring the option to PS4, PS4 Pro, or more importantly PS5.
On-screen inequality
But why is this so? Well, according to the head of PlayStation hardware at Sony, Masayasu Ito, and the head of the PlayStation platform, Hideaki Nishino, it’s because the company wants to “prioritize support for televisions” ( thanks Eurogamer ).
That statement makes little sense – the PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5 have never had a problem casting in 4K or 1080p on any screen, as far as we know, but what makes the situation even more frustrating is that Ito-san also said that “there is no technological problem” in terms of the PS5 being capable of supporting 1440p resolution. And so and everything …
Sony has also stated that it is keeping an eye on market trends to see if there is demand for 1440p, but it is not difficult to see that sales of 1440p monitors certainly dwarf those of 1080p at the moment. Also, if you are selling a console that is much more powerful than the PS4 Pro, with which many times you could not play 4K natively, does Sony really want users to play in 1080p?
1440p support isn’t the only area where Microsoft has an advantage when it comes to working on a wide variety of displays. Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S also received support for Variable Refresh Rates (VRR) in 2018, which helps eliminate screen out of sync and lag during small frame rate drops. This has become another must-have feature on PC, with FreeSync and G-Sync achieving pretty much the same result, but it’s completely absent on PS5 (although Sony has hinted that VRR is yet to come).
Low Latency Auto Mode (ALLM) is also missing from the PS5, prompting a TV to enable “Game Mode,” or the equivalent of its lowest input setting, when it detects that a console has been turned on. As expected at this time, this feature is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
It’s worth noting that Sony is also a powerful TV maker, while Microsoft is not. If anyone should be able to create a console that supports the latest display technology, it is Sony. However, it is Microsoft that offers users a quality of life feature that should really be taken for granted right now.
Since Sony generally takes months to release major system updates, it is not yet clear when support for 1440p will arrive on PS5. But the longer the wait, the more ridiculous the situation becomes.