Crimson Desert is shaping up to be one of the year’s most anticipated games, but a subsection of the gaming community remains reserved about its potential as the developer is yet to show any footage of the game running on console.

Developed by Pearl Abyss, the Korean studio known for making the mammoth MMO Black Desert Online, Crimson Desert is a single-player RPG that exists in a similar vein to Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3. Featuring a massive open world to explore, protagonist Kliff can wield medieval weapons and learn magical skills to engage in combat, help townsfolk, and uncover the secrets of mysterious floating islands in the sky.

Footage of Crimson Desert has consistently impressed audiences due to how varied and sprawling its gameplay looks. Some have even questioned whether the game is even real, with some speculation that the title could be pulling a fast one, much akin to The Day Before which was released in a state wildly different to what its trailers portrayed.

Judging from the most recent previews, Crimson Desert is indeed very real, and its release date is approaching fast with it set to launch on March 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

However, it appears that all of the footage shown so far has been recorded on PC, and the same can be said for all previews played of the game so far. Over on X, the gaming community is quick to voice its concerns towards developer Pearl Abyss.

In a response to a tweet about Digital Foundry’s PC performance analysis, one X user writes: “Yet they’re still hiding all console footage.”

The PR and marketing director for Pearl Abyss, Will Powers, was quick to respond to the accusation of the team ‘hiding’ console footage. He said: “We’re not hiding anything, and I’m sick of having to repeat myself.

“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.”

Later in the day, PlayStation published a blog post that dives into exactly how Crimson Desert has been optimised for its console hardware.

At least on the PS5 Pro, we now know that the game will utilise the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) to render the game at 4K with ‘higher frame rates’. We also know that the PS5 Pro will utilise raytracing in some areas of the game.

However, there’s still no word on the exact frame rate Crimson Desert is expected to run on base PS5 and Xbox consoles.

There are a few short gameplay clips embedded into the PlayStation Blog, which one would assume are recorded from the game running on PlayStation hardware. The footage looks to be running at 30fps, although it’s difficult to tell the exact frame rate it’s running at natively.

We’ve not played Crimson Desert on console ourselves yet, so can’t pass judgement on how the game actually runs on the hardware. At least for now, we’re putting our trust in Pearl Abyss’s words that console footage should be arriving in the next few weeks ahead of launch.

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