Marvel's Wolverine Will Run 60 FPS With Ray Tracing By Default On Base PS5
Insomniac Games has confirmed a genuine technical first for the studio: Marvel's Wolverine will run at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled on a standard PlayStation 5, and that combination is the game's default mode rather than an option players have to dig for.
The details come from an interview Insomniac gave IGN alongside a wave of hands-on previews published on Thursday, roughly a month before the game's September 15 release.
A First for Insomniac
Insomniac's past PlayStation titles, including the Marvel's Spider-Man series, have typically shipped with a 30 FPS fidelity mode and a separate 60 FPS performance mode, with ray tracing added to performance mode late in development or patched in after launch, as happened with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 .
Marvel's Wolverine breaks from that pattern. According to Insomniac head of technology Mike Fitzgerald, the studio built the game around a 60 FPS, ray-traced target from early in development rather than treating it as a stretch goal to chase down late. Senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed confirmed the result held up, saying simply that the game feels super smooth .
Why It's a Bigger Technical Ask Than It Sounds
Ray tracing is typically one of the first things sacrificed when a game targets a higher frame rate, since it's computationally expensive relative to the performance gains a 60 FPS mode is chasing in the first place. Shipping both together, on base PS5 hardware rather than PS5 Pro, and having that be the mode most players land in by default, is a meaningfully higher bar than what Insomniac has set for itself in the past.
The studio has previously confirmed Marvel's Wolverine will also support PS5 Pro enhancements, though the 60 FPS with ray tracing milestone applies to the base console.
New Environments Meant New Tech Investment
Part of the reason for the added technical focus traces back to the game's setting. Where the Spider-Man games are built around a single dense city, Marvel's Wolverine sends Logan through the wilderness of Canada and the streets of Madripoor, among other locations, which pushed Insomniac to invest heavily in foliage and jungle technology, including vegetation that reacts to wind and to characters moving through it.
The studio has also leaned into environmental destruction as a showcase for Wolverine's raw physicality, with most props in the game built to be destructible and to react in physically accurate ways during combat.
The Bigger Picture
As we've previously covered in our full preview , Marvel's Wolverine is shaping up to be a noticeably darker, more violent departure from Insomniac's Spider-Man games, with brutal claw combat and Logan's healing factor playing into both the story and the game's tone. A locked-in 60 FPS mode with ray tracing gives that combat a level of visual polish and responsiveness that wasn't guaranteed this early for an Insomniac title.
Marvel's Wolverine launches exclusively on PlayStation 5 on September 15, 2026.
This story was originally published by GameDaily on Aug 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the Games section. Add GameDaily as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
