New PlayStation 4 Pro patch for Final Fantasy XV makes it look worse

Video analysis at Digital Foundry confirms how Square Enix screwed this one up.

Up until today, the massive quest game Final Fantasy XV offered at least one "smooth" visual option for every single platform it's been released for—meaning, one option with a locked, mostly consistent frame rate. The catch has always been that PlayStation 4 Pro players have had to pick its simplest "lite" toggle (which removes all special visual enhancements) to enjoy this stable 30 frames-per-second refresh.

A new patch for the game went live on Monday, however, and owners of the pricier PlayStation 4 Pro may want to skip it if they dislike video stutter.

Unlike on Xbox One and standard PS4, the PS4 Pro version of FFXV asks players to pick from one of two visual modes. One of these turns up the resolution to somewhere near 1800p and adds other visual effects, but its frame rate is hampered by "frame pacing," in which its otherwise accurate 30Hz refresh is constantly interrupted by consistent judders. The other, "lite" mode originally dropped the resolution and other elements to nail a locked 30fps.

Today's 1.05 patch changes lite mode by removing a pretty important element: its frame rate cap. Now, the lower-resolution mode renders frames as quickly as it can, usually to the tune of 45 or 50fps. That may sound like an upgrade, but the problem, as the video analysts at Digital Foundry make plainly clear, is that most TV displays are not able to display video frames in any pattern other than 30Hz or 60Hz (with the exception of some PAL-minded 50Hz sets in various parts of the world). An inconsistent frame rate thus tends to look worse and feel less responsive to gaming button taps than even the "slow" 30Hz option.

Worse, Square Enix has also taken the bizarre step of removing the frame rate cap as a toggle, all while still leaving its "high" 1800p mode with the same, abysmal frame-pacing issues. The result: Until Square Enix issues another patch, no mode in Final Fantasy XV will look or feel smooth on PlayStation 4 Pro systems. Owners of more expensive hardware are left with an inferior experience, and this runs afoul of Sony's rules about Pro versions of its PS4 software.
In a future TV and console generation, this might not be an issue, as variable refresh rates will be baked into the HDMI 2.1 standard (which would remove the jumpiness that FFXV's new patch currently introduces). Current game systems will likely not be compatible with HDMI 2.1, however.

This article has been updated with clarification about HDMI 2.1.