In fact, it may arguably be a downgrade
Earlier this week, we reported that the Batman: Return to Arkham collection had received a patch that — alongside numerous other improvements — enabled support for the PlayStation 4 Pro. Essentially, this patch (1.02) was intended to enable a more consistent framerate, as well as providing a plethora of stability improvements and bug fixes.
However, while this patch did ensure that the performance of Batman: Arkham Asylum was markedly improved, users over on Reddit were crying foul, as many believed that its sequel —Arkham City — had received a significant downgrade in terms of functionality on the PS4 Pro.
According to Digital Foundry, this does seem to be the case. On the both the PS4 and its more powerful counterpart, a cap of 30FPS has been implemented. While on the original console, this does help make performance a lot more stable and consistent, the Pro version of the game was actually capable of hitting nearly 60FPS in some instances. Of course, this had led many to believe that the game could potentially hit a consistent 60FPS with a bit of further refinement.
Likewise, both the PS4 and the Pro have almost identical image quality under patch 1.02, as the version of the game on Sony’s more powerful console does not run at an increased resolution over the base hardware. In fact, Arkham Asylum will drop its resolution down to 1344×1080 at the exact same spots on both consoles; something that has led Digital Foundry to believe that these reductions in image quality aren’t actually dynamically adjusted at all, and may occur at predefined points in the game.
Digital Foundry is also keen to point out that Sony’s technical guidelines for PS4 Pro games mandates that each title operates at a bare minimum of 1080p. While it is true that Arkham Asylum does have a vertical pixel count of 1080, the horizontal resolution is well below the PS4 Pro’s native display settings.
On the plus side, Arkham Asylum does, in fact, perform much more consistently on the original PS4, with framerate drops becoming much less of a common occurrence. Not only that, but shadow quality has been noticeably improved over its implementation in the previous patch.
All in all, while patch 1.02 for Arkham Asylum does make matters better for original PS4 owners, Pro owners may actually consider it to be somewhat of a downgrade.
At the very least, I hope that Warner Bros. will soon allow PS4 Pro owners to toggle this framerate cap on or off, if only to make some of these perceived downgrades entirely optional.
Batman: Return to Arkham patch 1.02 – there’s good news and bad news [Eurogamer]
