Bloodborne 60 FPS Patch Now Possible On PS5, But Will Sony Enable It?

One of the best parts about owning a next-gen console right now (if you’re lucky) is the ability to play older games at higher framerates or resolutions. Bloodborne, a celebrated PS4 exclusive by FromSoftware, sadly doesn’t offer any way to play it above its base 30 FPS presentation it launched with. However, with Sony slowly updating older PS4 games to run at higher frame rates, it’s surprising to see one of its best exclusives still left behind, even after community hacks which prove it’s up to the task.

Recently, Sony updated Ratchet and Clank to run at 60 FPS on PS5, and this caught the attention of longtime Soulseborne modder Lance McDonald. In the thread below, McDonald reveals that the update doesn’t require any changes to the games compiled on the old SDKs made for PS4.

The obvious segue here: this means Bloodborne could theoretically be officially updated to run at 60fps (not 4K though, that requires the PS4 Pro SDK) without an SDK retarget. So the job is even easier than we assumed. So why the heck isn’t it being done?

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) April 3, 2021

This essentially means that if PlayStation wanted, they could enable a 60 FPS target for Bloodborne without too much work from developers. With so many PS4 games getting the 60 FPS treatment, it’s quite disappointing to see no improvement to Bloodborne’s horrendous performance. A quick refresher on that – Bloodborne launched on PS4 running at 30 FPS, which is also broken with improper frame pacing. What that means is, while the game outputs 30 framers per second, those frames are not evenly delivered, resulting in a stutter.

McDonald had previously patched the game on his own to run at 60 FPS on a PS4 Pro (albeit at 720p). The patch was unofficial and required a modified console to deploy it on. You can learn more about the unofficial 60 FPS Bloodborne patch with insight from Digital Foundry, and watch what the game might look like on PS5 (with full 4K 60 FPS support) below.

With rumours of a PS5 remaster and PC release swirling about, it would be nice to see Sony address the game’s state on its new console. However, with From Software still working hard on Elden Ring, and Japan Studio (who co-produced the game) no longer functional, the chances of seeing a proper Bloodborne update for the new console remain slim.