Even a PS4 Pro doesn’t render its themes in native 4K resolution. It renders them internally in 1080p and then upscales them to fit your 4K screen.
To get a possible glimpse into the future, the PS4 theme wizards at Truant Pixel decided to try an experiment.
They ran their recently-revealed concept for a legacy PlayStation theme in the theme software SDK on a development workstation in true 4K, with the full 3840×2160 pixel count.
The theme backdrop (you won’t see the PS4 UI on top of it) runs at 60 FPS with no post-processing. If you want to compare, you can check out our recent article showcasing the theme running at 1080p on an actual PS4 devkit.
It’s worth mentioning once more that the theme is not finished, and it’s not intended for release due to including imagery that is the property of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Incidentally, in case you’d like a nice PlayStation-themed wallpaper, the good folks at Truant Pixel also provided some high-resolution captures of the theme on Twitter. You can find those at the bottom of the post. This includes a couple in ultra-widescreen resolution, which is great since good desktop wallpapers with that aspect ratio are pretty rare.
Incidentally, while the PS4 doesn’t run themes at native 4K, maybe the rumored PS5 will. We could be looking at the future right here.
