AMB and Xbox announced that FSR 4.1 is on its way to Xbox Series X and S consoles. This announcement came a few weeks after Sony announced QSSR upscaling for base PS5 consoles, which is a result of their partnership with AMD. This pair of news stories got me thinking how this is, as far as I can recall, the first home console generation where the launch hardware will be capable of better visual fidelity and performance deep into its lifecycle.

My first thought jumped to the Expansion Pak for the Nintendo 64, which doubled the console's 4MB of RDRAM to 8MB. You could pay up and upgrade the console's performance in some games or you had to upgrade for others like Majora's Mask or Donkey Kong 64. I remember buying DK64 at a garage sale and then needing to buy an Expansion Pak to actually play the thing. I think we bought one at the Hollywood Video down the street.

In the generations before, developers would design custom chips for the game cartridges themselves to enhance performance; just look at the difference between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 within five years of each other on the same console. Of course, there was the Super FX chip for certain Super Nintendo games to pushed 3D on the 16-bit console. While I have never owned a Sega Genesis, there's no denying the Sega CD and the 32X as the foundation of the Tower of Power. In more modern times, we have the mid-gen refresh with "[Pro](OPINION - Why PS Neo is Coming Out this Year)" consoles.

But all of those came at a cost post-launch or were exclusive to a certain title. These new software upscalers are patches to the console's operating system. We have already seen with QSSR and PSSR 2.0 how transformative these can be.

That's not to say there is not a cost—there is if you are buying now—but for those day one and early adopters, I can't think of a time where the console you bought at launch got better so late in its life, both in performance and price.

As for the AMD FSR 4.1 support on Xbox, Vikki Blake at GamesIndustry.biz makes a good point:

"AMD did not share any other details for Xbox Series X|S. Developers will have to patch their games to use FSR 4.1, so older titles won't upgrade automatically.

Series X|S also lack dedicated machine-learning hardware, so gains are unlikely to match the PS5 Pro, where Sony already offers its own upscalers, PSSR and QSSR."

The slip-up there is that QSSR is not tapping into machine-learning hardware (that I am aware of). QSSR is exclusive for the base PS5, which launched right alongside the Xbox Series consoles.1 I would assume the performance would be in line with QSSR, but behind PSSR 2 and the rumored version 3.0. I'll wait for Digital Foundry's analysis for the final verdict though.

Footnotes

  1. And is no doubt also designed for the upcoming PS6 handheld. ↩