Digital Foundry has the full lowdown on the quality of the Xbox Series X and Series S ports of Alan Wake 2.
Here's everything announced and revealed during The Galaxies Spring Showcase 2026, including Echoes of Aincrad, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, Northgard: Battlegrounds, Kitaria Fables 2, Phasmophobia x Alan Wake 2, and much more.
DF: "Alan Wake 2 is one of our games of the generation - a proper technical showcase - but with the arrival of Sony's upgraded PSSR upscaler, it's also a key proving ground for the capabilities of the revised technology. In its 60fps performance mode, the game's complex foliage, dense geometry and demanding lighting are paired with an internal 864p resolution, upscaled to 4K. It's a challenge that the original PSSR couldn't handle, sometimes comparing unfavourably with the original FSR2. However, the upgraded PSSR is a revelation by comparison."
I've already completed this game and everything else there is to do in it sadly, so I have no need to go back and enjoy the added enhancements that the new PSSR brings to this game. But I definitely want to go back and check out Control as I still haven't finished up all the DLC for that yet.
O definitely do Control is a longer game than Alan Wake 2! Plus there is an Alan Wake tie in with Control, plus you face off against a scary boss! That guy was hard asf man.
Jesse Faden the main character, has so many upgrades to her movesets, and object of power gun. Playing this game now to prepare for Control Resonant.
It’s a terrible and boring game.
No way I will ever go back to it . I really do not like Remedy’s touch
I've played through the game numerous times. It was my favorite game of 2023. I have so many other games to play. Could I go back and play it for a few minutes to appreciate some extra clarity in the distance? Sure. Would I rather play a game I haven't finished or played yet and enjoy the PSSR updates brought to those titles instead? Yes.
I mean im kinda with Neonridr on this, like when i game is so good you get everything you can out of it, a slightly shaper image is cool but not worth the hassle of install/update etc
It's mad they can take a 864p image and make it close to a 4K image. This tech is gonna do so much for console gaming
the crazier part is, sometimes enabling this kind of AI upscaling tech actually produces a BETTER image than natively rendering at 4K (and to be clear, I'm not talking about DLSS5's AI slop that takes creativity away from the game developers).
Dunno why you're getting downvotes there is actually instances of this happening. Stellar Blade being one of them. DF reported the PSSR mode looks better than the native 4K mode. Im assuming its PSSR from 1440p or higher. So imagine with the 2.0 update
Strange that the other story on the frontpage with AI upscaling involved is receiving a hugely negative response in the comments but a Playstation AI upscaler story...well that's just great!
No it's still bad, just not nearly as egregious, but there's definitely a sizeable (and growing) group of gamers who dislike any TAA/DLSS/AI upscale in general, myself included. Every time there's some update to one of these upscaling methods I roll my eyes because only when we improve from the issues can we address the issues, but when talking outside of an improvement or update suddenly there's no issues and we're The crazy ones for criticizing AI upscaling
That's because one is changing the art (characters faces) and one is making things look sharper. Isnt because it's PlayStation.
CONTROL Ultimate Edition and Alan Wake 2 will support new PSSR.
This more advanced version of PSSR will soon be available to all PlayStation 5 Pro owners, bringing noticeable improvements in image stability clarity of motion.
Explore the Oldest House and Bright Falls with a new level of visual fidelity.
Such a weird post by them. Apparently they just mean the system wide toggle. Which is perfectly fine. This is based off a post they made after this post.
Not sure what's weird about that. The update being system wide is basically free marketing for any game using the tech. I assume they already have access to the update and are happy with the results.
Why is it weird for a dev to let people know their game runs better now? If they didn’t mention it that would be weird
I just mean they worded it like they did a custom thing...which they could do by tweaking base resolution if the upgraded pssr allows it with no image drawbacks. I'd be down for that.
IMPRESSIVE!!! O.o
This video is a hard punch in the face of all Series S haters and lazy developers!
The most demanding current gen game to date runs GREAT on the Series S!
The Series X version has the superior performance over the PS5 version! The Series X on performance mode maintain consistent 60fps while the PS5 will run at the 50´s most of the time.
But we heard that the Series S was supposed to hold back the Series X version!
So how the Series X version is the superior port compared to the PS5? XD
Congrats Remedy! You guys did a remarkable work!
Only issue I’m having with the ps5 version currently is the per pixel shimmering that they had with Control albeit to a lesser extent.
It’s far worse in Alan Wake 2. What’s strange is they put that issue down to the way ray path tracing works with Control but Alan Wake 2 has no ray tracing on PS5. Kind of wish I’d bought it on PC though, however I probably would have needed to buy a new graphics card along with it.
Unless developers are lazy or incompetent, a multiplat game will run better on the more powerful console.
Question should be, why don't all mutiplat games run better on the most powerful console? Incompetence, laziness or something else $$$...
Gonna be honest, the only person I've seen play the game on Xbox had a bunch of bugs. Either the game is poorly optimized for the Xbox or the Xbox is just not as good at running it, not sure but I had no bugs on the PS5 for what it's worth.