Some PS4 games will see performance juiced on PS4 Pro via upcoming 'Boost Mode'

Sony has confirmed to Polygon and other outlets that an upcoming PlayStation 4 firmware update (4.50) will include a "Boost Mode" which allows some PlayStation 4 games to perform better on the PlayStation 4 Pro, even if they don't officially support it.

This is potentially good news for developers with games on the PlayStation 4, as it may encourage more PS4 Pro owners to purchase or play older PS4 games that don't have offical support for the Pro's beefier hardware.

"Boost Mode lets PS4 Pro run at a higher GPU and CPU clock speed for smoother gameplay on some PS4 games that were released before the launch of PS4 Pro (and has not been updated to support PS4 Pro)," a Sony representative told Polygon about the upcoming Boost Mode. "Games that have a variable frame rate may benefit from a higher frame rate, and load times may be shorter in some games too."

It's also nice to see Sony patching an explicit performance boost toggle into the PS4 Pro, since the company has been very gentle about asking developers to patch their old games to support the Pro and those patched games don't always make it clear to players how the game runs differently on a Pro.

"With our evangelism, we don't have rules,” system architect Mark Cerny told Gamasutra last year, ahead of the PS4 Pro's November debut. “With regards to patches, we're very happy to get pretty much any support. If [developers will] open up their codebase and do something for PS4 Pro, we're very happy.”

It's not yet clear when Sony will release the 4.5 firmware update, but it is currently in some stage of beta testing. For a more technical breakdown of the PlayStation 4 Pro and how it runs older PS4 games differently than those built from the ground up to support it, check out our conversation with Mark Cerny from last year.