For weeks now, it feels like the technical performance of Pearl Abyss’ ambitious open-world game Crimson Desert is all anyone has wanted to talk about. We’ve seen it running on high-end PCs, as well as how it fares on the beefy PS5 Pro, but never how it looks on a base PlayStation 5. Until now.
A lengthy gameplay video shared on PlayStation Japan’s YouTube channel has finally given us a glimpse into what playing Crimson Desert will look like for those who own the standard PS5. Admittedly, the encoding of the video leaves a little to be desired, with it being limited to 1080p and 30fps on YouTube, so it’s hard to tell just how shiny it all looks from a graphical perspective, but the good news is that it all seems to be running relatively smoothly with no noticeable frame dips or hitches.
The gameplay reveal comes just two days before Crimson Desert’s launch on March 19, and will come as some relief to PS5 owners who feared that they wouldn’t see how it performed on their hardware of choice until it was installed on their console. Still, questions will likely continue to swirl over how well the game will perform on Xbox — and the underpowered Series S in particular.
This new look follows the reveal of PS5 Pro gameplay, which was shown off last week by Digital Foundry. It’s safe to say it impressed DF’s John Linneman, who called it “a stunning game”, and said that performance Mode “puts up a good fight,” and “by and large” the 60fps target is maintained. “I was surprised by how good it was overall,” he added.
Full specs for Crimson Desert on PS5 and Xbox have also been detailed recently, with performance, balanced, and quality modes detailed for all consoles, except the Xbox Series S, which lacks a balanced option.
For weeks, the console versions of Crimson Desert had come under scrutiny, with Pearl Abyss even being accused by some fans online of hiding the game’s PlayStation and Xbox versions prior to launch, with some fearing a Cyberpunk 2077-style launch situation could arise, inasmuch as the console versions of the game ran nowhere near as smoothly as their PC counterpart.
Crimson Desert – March 2026 Screenshots
But those fears were eased by a Crimson Desert dev, who begged fans to “let us cook”. “We’re not hiding anything, and I’m sick of having to repeat myself,” Pearl Abyss spokesperson Will Powers said at the time. “I’ve repeated 100s of times that we’ll reveal things ahead of launch to give people adequate time to still preorder the game for themselves. We’re saying this openly… Let us cook? Please and thank you. /rant”
Well, that time has now come with the reveal of this base PS5 Crimson Desert gameplay. What platform will you be playing it on? Have all of your performance questions been answered ahead of launch? Let us know in the comments!
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
