The PS5 Doesn't Support 1440p Now, But That Could Change

In a lot of respects it feels like the paradigms of console and PC gaming are drifting closer together with the release of the new Xboxes and the PlayStation 5, but in one respect Sony's new system won't follow suit: at launch, it won't have support for 1440p resolution output, the common half-step between 1080p and 4K. As with many other things about the PS5, though, that could change in the future.

Speaking with Impress AV Watch (via Nibel, interview in Japanese), Sony Senior Vice President Hideaki Nishino says that 1440p support could be added to the PS5 in the future if Sony sees demand for it. As for why it's not there in the first place, Nishino says Sony wanted to focus on TVs—and, it's not at all a stretch to say, but far more people will be hooking up their new consoles to TVs that support up to either 1080p or 4K instead of gaming monitors that split the difference at 1440p. Even Steam's most recent hardware survey says that that 65% of PC, Mac, and Linux players still go with 1080p as their primary resolution, compared to 6.75% for 1440p and 2.30% for 4K.

Even though Microsoft's all-digital Xbox Series S is advertised as supporting up to 1440p, it still strikes as a bit of an odd bullet point considering that the resolution is so uncommon outside gaming monitors and that so many next-gen optimized titles (such as Watch Dogs: Legion and Fortnite) target 1080p on the system instead.

At the same time, even if it only affects a small portion of Sony's consumers, it is odd to see the PS5 ship without a 1440p option. Just the other day, EA announced that Apex Legends will run at 1440p on next-gen consoles before it gets a proper upgrade patch, and it's not as though games relying on a dynamic resolution might not hover around 1440p when below 4K. Native output, even scaled down from 4K, seems like it'd be on a short list of options to integrate.

The PS5's system features could always change with future updates, though, and we already know they will at least in one regard. The PS5 currently doesn't support expansion of its internal storage because Sony has yet to approve any compatible M.2 drives yet, but once they do, the option will be enabled with a software update. We may also see a future update where Sony lets users backup their PS5 games on external USB storage.