Cyberpunk 2077 Gets Its Long-Awaited PS5 Pro Upgrade Today

Night City is getting a serious facelift. Today, April 8, CD Projekt Red's free PS5 Pro update for Cyberpunk 2077 goes live, and it's a bigger deal than most people probably expected.

The update is free for anyone who already owns a copy, and it leans hard into the PS5 Pro's stronger hardware. The headline feature is support for Sony's PSSR 2 upscaling technology, the AI-powered successor to the original PSSR that Sony unveiled last month. It's already been adopted by titles like Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert, and now Night City joins that list.

Worth noting: Cyberpunk 2077 is currently in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalogue, so if you're a PS Plus Extra or Premium member, you get access to this enhanced version at no extra cost.

What's Actually Changing

The visual side of things goes well beyond just slapping PSSR on top. CD Projekt Red has implemented BVH8 (8-way Bounding Volume Hierarchy) support for ray tracing, which improves how lighting, shadows, and reflections are rendered across the game. Kuba Knapik, Vice President and Global Art Director at CD Projekt Red, explained that the team wanted the update to bring Night City's lighting "even closer to our artistic vision for this world." That's a pretty telling quote from someone who's clearly still proud of what this game looks like five years on.

Three performance modes come with the update, giving players genuine flexibility:

• Ray Tracing Pro turns on every available ray tracing enhancement: reflections, ambient occlusion, skylight, shadows, emissive lighting. Targets 40 FPS on VRR displays, 30 FPS without.
• Ray Tracing is the middle ground. Select ray tracing features stay on while the game targets 60 FPS.
• Performance prioritises frame rate above all else. On VRR-enabled displays, you're looking at up to 90 FPS while still maintaining solid image quality.

That 90 FPS option is probably the one that'll turn heads. Console Cyberpunk at 90 frames felt unthinkable not too long ago.

A Surprise, Given What CDPR Said

This one is worth flagging. CD Projekt Red had previously been pretty clear that no new content was coming for Cyberpunk 2077, with all focus shifting to the sequel and The Witcher 4. A PS5 Pro patch wasn't something most players were banking on, which makes today's update a genuinely pleasant surprise rather than a long-promised delivery.

Push Square noted the community reaction was equally caught off guard, with several players commenting they'd assumed a Pro upgrade was off the table entirely. Timing likely helped here too: the buzz around PSSR 2 seems to have pushed CDPR to commit to the upgrade.

No new story content, no DLC. This is purely a technical improvement. But given where Cyberpunk 2077 started on console back in 2020, and where it sits now, a free upgrade that gives Night City up to 90 FPS with ray tracing is a solid way to sign off on the current-gen version of the game.