PS4 1080p Graphics Lawsuit Dismissed

Last summer, a man launched a class-action lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment, alleging that the company misled consumers by claiming Killzone: Shadow Fall's multiplayer mode featured 1080p graphics. He was looking to recover damages for the group to the tune of $5 million.

Now, according to Courthouse News, a judge has dismissed the case "with prejudice," which basically means permanently. The publication notes that settlement terms were not disclosed. Neither side has weighed in with a statement on the dismissal of the case.

The suit was originally filed in August 2014 by a man named Douglas Ladore in U.S. District Court in California. He claimed that gamers "quickly noticed and complained that Killzone's multiplayer graphics were blurry to the point of distraction." This is despite Sony having claimed the game would offer "1080p multiplayer graphics, a crowning achievement in the video game industry," and having even featured the 1080p figure on the game's box.

In addition to the $5 million in damages, Ladore sought to prevent Sony from continuing to advertise Shadow Fall as running in 1080p. The game's PlayStation Store product page does not mention 1080p as one of the game's selling points, though it's unclear if it ever did.

A Digital Foundry report from March 2014 revealed that Shadow Fall uses a technique called temporal reprojection to achieve its resolution. The lawsuit said this is meant to provide "'subjectively similar' results" to full 1080p, but that it isn't the same.

For its part, Shadow Fall developer Guerrilla Games acknowledged that it used the temporal reprojection method to combine pixels and motion vectors from multiple lower-resolution frames as a means to reconstruct a full 1080p image.

For lots more on the case, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.