NBA 2K20 PS4 Pro Performance Issues Remain a Haunting Mystery

It’s been a rough year for NBA 2K20 from a public-relations perspective. The game has sold incredibly well, but its nightmare launch, many sizable patches, and lack of in-depth patch notes have left many fans confused and frustrated. Perhaps no group remains more frustrated than those with PS4 Pro units who have no way to reliably play NBA 2K20 without running into debilitating performance issues. In fact, we have a forum thread on OS that is over 600 posts at this point where people have talked about these PS4 Pro issues.

The above video by AltChar shows off the performance issues that many on the PS4 Pro are still having each and every time they boot up the game. The issues consist of a clear frame-rate dip at various points in the game, but it generally becomes most crippling late in the shot clock or when various UI elements pop up on screen. The impact of this drop occurs with various camera angles, and it’s sometimes hard to explain how awful it is because it usually doesn’t look that bad in video form. However, the issue is every bit as serious as many make it out to be because the frame-rate drops also create bouts of input lag. Since you can never really plan on the performance issues, you don’t really know when your inputs will be delayed. When this issue occurs in online games, it becomes even worse because there is already some general input lag much of the time there.

As someone with a PS4 Pro, I can confirm I’ve had similar issues. I can mostly mitigate them by using a very zoomed-out camera view, but it’s odd that 2K has either vacillated between staying mum on this particular issue, or having 2K Support say there is no issue to report, as seen below from OS user ataman5:

People should obviously not have to play from a zoomed-out view to have a stable frame rate, but this theorizing on how to fix the issue comes back to 2K as well. Without any direction from 2K at large, it means people are trying to come up with their own theories on why the problem is happening and continuing to occur. Some think it has to do with what model PS4 Pro you have, some think it has to do with the HDD read speed or how capable the fans are on the PS4. Others have talked about turning off HDR or mentioning specific TV models where they have seen the issues occur.

This would not be the first time the NBA 2K series has had these problems either. I specifically remember calling it out in a review I wrote a couple years back. However, in the past this performance issue has been something 2K patched with relative ease early in the game’s cycle. In addition, one element to this is that perhaps 2K does know what’s going on but can’t publicly “blame” it on Sony. If there is actually a difference in these PS4 Pro models, and 2K’s development kits are also different from those PS4 Pro models, then it could make fixing this problem an incredibly difficult venture.

Whatever the case may be, this issue has persisted since launch, and it’s come to a point where it’s becoming less likely the issue will be fixed. This leaves PS4 Pro owners experiencing the issue with not much to do now other than deal with the problem, or move on to the Xbox One or PC if they have that option. We can continue to highlight the problem, and these PS4 Pro owners can continue to escalate their complaints, but it’s hard to believe 2K is not aware of the problem at this point. The studio may just not have a solution to it this year.