Sony has announced Power Saver, a curious new PlayStation 5 game setting that will “scale back performance” of supported games but reduce your console’s overall power consumption.
The option, which is rolling out in the next PS5 System Beta, was briefly detailed in a PlayStation Blog update today — even though it won’t actually be available even in beta, at least publicly.
Today’s announcement looks to be more of an acknowledgment that the feature is being worked on, then, ahead of it being spotted by users.
“With this update, you may notice a new option in your settings menu called Power Saver,” PlayStation’s VP of Product Management Shuzo Kikuchi wrote today. “While this feature won’t be available during the beta phase, once it officially launches, supported PS5 games will scale back performance and will allow your PS5 to reduce its power consumption when the feature is enabled optionally by gamers.
“If not enabled, or if games do not support the feature, the performance will not be scaled back and power consumption will not be reduced.”
And that’s about all the details that Sony is announcing today, other than a confirmation that Power Saver will not be compatible with the console’s VR mode — for those of you who bought a PlayStation VR2 headset.
More details on which games will support Power Saver, and how game performance will be degraded should you choose to turn it on, will be announced in the future.
“We’ll share more details on this new option as we get closer to launch,” Kikuchi concluded, “including supported PS5 games and estimated impact, so stay tuned!”
Why is Sony doing this? In its blog post, the company makes mention of its ‘Road to Zero’ environmental plan that includes a target for the company to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2040.
But the option has also been linked to the continuing rumors that Sony is once again planning a PlayStation handheld device. And indeed, the ability for Sony to get some of its PS5 games running at a lower spec on its main home console would be a useful test for a more lightweight handheld.
Whatever the reason, and whether Sony end up launching a PlayStation handheld or not, it’s going to be fascinating to compare the performance of PS5 games running with Power Saver enabled, especially with Xbox Series X, and the already lower-power Xbox Series S.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
