Crimson Desert on PS5: After All That Hype, Just an Average Game?
For months, Pearl Abyss fueled our wildest dreams with jaw-dropping PC footage. But this Tuesday, console reality finally caught up with the hype: 20 minutes of Crimson Desert running on a standard PS5, and for some players, it’s déjà vu with a bitter aftertaste.
The ghost of Cyberpunk 2077 and its mass refunds in 2020 still haunts the community. So when PlayStation Japan dropped standard PS5 gameplay just 48 hours before Crimson Desert’s launch, every pixel got the forensic treatment. The video, mysteriously uploaded in 1080p only, split the internet between relief and suspicion—especially as Sony is rolling out PSSR 2 on PS5 Pro today.
Image credit: Pearl Abyss
20 minutes of PS5 gameplay… uploaded in 1080p: the community is baffled
The footage surfaced on PlayStation Japan’s PLAY! PLAY! PLAY! show: twenty minutes of Crimson Desert on a standard PS5, showing off combat, exploration, and platforming puzzles—the kind of deep dive fans had been begging for. But the devil’s in the technical details: the video was uploaded in 1080p only, letting YouTube’s compression do its worst. It’s a baffling choice when 4K has been standard for years, and it immediately set off alarm bells.
Social media split into two camps within hours. On one side, the skeptics: “1080p on YouTube is like smearing Vaseline on your screen,” summed up one X comment that made the rounds. Another user piled on: “It’s impossible to judge quality at this resolution. And don’t even get me started on framerate drops—videos like this never show them.” On the flip side, optimists welcomed the move. Reddit was full of positive takes: “Looks good, I’ll probably buy it at launch,” wrote one player, while another was hyped about the generous runtime—“20 full minutes, that’s awesome.”
One detail worth noting: comments are disabled on the video, which initially fueled conspiracy theories. In reality, that’s just standard practice for the PlayStation Japan channel—nothing specific to Crimson Desert.
Console specs that make gamers wince
The video only confirms what Pearl Abyss revealed nine days before launch: console compromises are real. Here’s what players can expect, depending on their hardware:
- PS5 / Xbox Series X: 1080p in Performance mode (targeting 60 FPS, low raytracing) or upscaled 4K in Quality mode (max 30 FPS)
- Xbox Series S: 720p in Performance, 1080p max in Quality
- PS5 Pro: Native 4K at 30 FPS in Quality, or upscaled 4K at 60 FPS in Performance
The gap with the PC showcases that built Crimson Desert’s reputation is glaring. Digital Foundry even showed the game running beautifully on a four-year-old GPU at Ultra settings—proof that optimization is there, but base consoles are hitting their natural limits. Five years after the PS5’s debut, each generation is starting to feel the strain of ever-bigger developer ambitions. And while Pearl Abyss is betting on an old-school premium model with no microtransactions, the visual experience still has to justify the price tag on every platform.
Between relief and suspicion: the shadow of Cyberpunk 2077 still looms
You can’t watch this PS5 footage without thinking of Cyberpunk 2077. Over five years ago, CD Projekt Red carefully avoided showing the game on PS4 and Xbox One before launch, leading to one of the industry’s biggest fiascos and a historic wave of refunds. The parallel is obvious, and the community isn’t shy about drawing it. For months, Pearl Abyss only showed dazzling PC footage, stoking massive graphics hype while keeping console versions in the dark.
Will Powers, head of PR and marketing at Pearl Abyss, tried to calm things down two weeks ago with a now-viral line: “We’re not hiding anything. Let us cook.” Dropping these 20 minutes seems to prove him at least partly right—the studio didn’t wait for post-launch reviews to show console reality. And that reality, as one analyst put it, is that Crimson Desert “looks like a typical PS5 game.” Not a disaster, not embarrassing, but a far cry from the PC footage that fired up players’ imaginations. The difference between a Cyberpunk-level disaster and a simple graphics letdown might come down to one thing: fun. If the gameplay delivers, the visual compromise will be forgiven. If not, the comparisons will be brutal.
The timing of this video is no accident. PSSR 2, Sony’s new upscaling tech rolling out today on PS5 Pro, could change the game. Oliver Mackenzie from Digital Foundry doesn’t mince words: “It’s such a huge leap over PSSR 1 that it almost justifies the PS5 Pro’s existence on its own.” Crimson Desert will support this tech from day one, promising a noticeably better experience on Sony’s premium console. For standard PS5 owners, though, the real verdict drops in 48 hours—controller in hand, far from YouTube’s compression artifacts.
