Outriders: PS5 Vs PS4 - What's The Difference?

It's been over a month since "Outriders" came out and shocked the world by being relatively well-received by critics after having a ton of negative coverage for its demo. Since then, players have been shooting their way through enemy soldiers and monsters while looting to their hearts' content. Players can expect an exciting campaign full of optional bosses and quests with a healthy offering of post-game content. Of course, one of the most exciting things about "Outriders" is that it's a brand-new video game with next-gen enhancements, something that's been uncommon with the high number of game delays in 2021.

Both the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 versions of the game offer a variety of perks that the last-gen consoles simply cannot replicate. Neither next-gen version offers anything too crazy, but they do use the added power. While you could play the game on Xbox via Xbox Game Pass, you can still buy it on PS5 and PS4. Here's the difference between the two PlayStation versions.

In what is pretty much standard for cross-gen games, the PS5 version of "Outriders" offers improved resolution and a higher framerate, although it's not as impressive as some of the other PS5 titles. In Digital Foundry's breakdown of the "Outriders" demo, they found that the resolution of the PS5 version scales between 1260p and 1800p, depending on what is happening in the game. VGTech on YouTube found it to move between 1692p and 1080p in the full release of the game, with upsampling to 2160p.

As for framerate, Digital Foundry found that "Outriders" was able to maintain its 60 FPS for the majority of the demo, with minor dips occurring occasionally. VGTech found a very similar performance during the full release, so expect a buttery-smooth experience on PS5. For a quick comparison, Digital Foundry found that the Xbox Series X version runs at a resolution between 1440p and 2088p but has more frequent frame dips, fluctuating between 50 and 60 FPS.

Using the power of the PS5's fancy new SSD, video games load much faster on the new consoles than they did on last-gen consoles, and "Outriders" is no exception. In GameSpot's comparison video of the demo, showing the PS4 Pro and PS5 versions running side-by-side, they found that the PS5 version loads in from the main menu significantly faster. The PS4 Pro version took 28:51 seconds to load in from the main menu, while the PS5 version took only 4:46 seconds, which is an insane difference. With this being a cross-gen and cross-play title, however, if you play online with someone on the last-gen hardware, you will need to wait for them to load in.

In another example of the fast loading, the PS5 version transitioned from one cutscene into another in only 3:25 seconds. The PS4 Pro version took 44:49 seconds to do the same transition, saving PS5 players about half a minute for every load during the game. If anyone ever tells you that you can't buy more time in the day, show them "Outriders" loading on a PS5.