What To Expect From Warframe's Next-Gen Upgrade
The long-running loot shooter Warframe – which beat the odds and harsh early reviews to become a popular free-to-play title far before Fortnite or Destiny 2 made it the norm — has reached another milestone. Warframe is officially heading to the next generation of consoles — first to PlayStation 5 and eventually to Series X — with various visual and performance enhancements.
A post on the PlayStation Blog by Digital Extremes lead producer Dave Kudirka offered the first look at what the 18 million players on PlayStation can expect from Warframe's next-generation upgrade. One of the most noticeable improvements is the implementation of an enhanced renderer that will deliver dynamic lighting effects.
Dynamic lighting capabilities on new consoles help next-gen gaming inch closer to movies, and their effects in Warframe are instantly apparent in the PS5 reveal trailer. You can see it wherever a light source appears in an environment, from the muzzle flash of a weapon to the glow of your character's abilities. Dynamic lighting also brings settings to life in various ways, including creating realistic reflections in urban areas such as Cetus.
Moving to next-generation consoles also means Warframe will leverage better technology to run at higher levels of detail. Kudirka revealed Warframe will run at up to 4K and 60 framers per second. The SSD inside the consoles also means reduced load times throughout the game.
Further, Warframe's PlayStation 5 upgrade will take advantage of the new capabilities of the DualSense controller. The adaptive triggers on the DualSense will be tuned to deliver the impact of every trigger pull to bring "a new level of immersion," Kudirka said. The haptic feedback technology will also generate vibration patterns that respond to environmental situations such as snow on Venus or dust on Mars.
In an announcement on the Warframe official site, the developers confirmed cross-platform play between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions is coming as well. Cross-save features will also be built in at launch, meaning that players who upgrade can seamlessly transition from the older version of the game to the newer one without losing any progress.
Digital Extremes asserted that plans were in place to release a Series X version of the title. Given Microsoft's commitment to creating backward compatible platforms and software, it might be safe to assume that Xbox One owners will receive similar support when Warframe arrives, but the developers have yet to confirm this or offer a Series X release date.