Crimson Desert is the next important title set to release in March 2026, and many players are already looking forward to it. First testers have already been able to play the action RPG, and the initial impressions are very promising. Technically, we could expect a really good game here. At least that is reported by the well-known magazine Digital Foundry.
Who has tested it? Digital Foundry is considered a reputable magazine when it comes to technical tests of games. The magazine was part of IGN until recently, but has been independent again since August 2025.
The testers from Digital Foundry have already had a first look at the technology of Crimson Desert and are quite impressed so far. The technology appears to be very good and the performance promising.
Ray Tracing Technology Without Ray Tracing Issues
The testers tested Crimson Desert on a high-end system: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D, an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, and 32 GB of RAM. But we can reassure you: You don’t need a high-end PC to play Crimson Desert. Even a moderately modern mid-range PC is sufficient, and alternatively, you can also play Crimson Desert on the PS5 or Xbox.
- No upscaling is used and the performance has been impressive so far.
- Pearl Abyss fully focused on the PC platform, and this is directly noticeable in the performance. You won’t get a half-hearted console port here.
- Ray tracing-based lighting is a real gain for Crimson Desert: Torches and local light sources at night contribute fully to global illumination and present the game beautifully. And this without significant performance loss.
- The game looks as good and sometimes even better than Unreal Engine 5, “but with the difference that the 7900 XTX delivers this at native 4K with a target rate of 60 fps.”
Ray tracing is a lighting technique where all physical light rays are calculated as they would hit specific surfaces. This makes the lighting appear particularly realistic. The downside is often that ray tracing consumes a lot of power and usually requires a fast graphics card.
First Major Game Release Without Technical Issues?
Why does technology play such a big role? Technology is repeatedly a reason why players strongly criticize new releases on Steam or other platforms. The reason: When you spend 60 or 70 euros on a AAA game, you expect the developers to optimize their game so that you can play it without problems.
However, this has repeatedly failed in the past: Games launched with serious performance issues, and users vented their frustrations.
Especially games with Unreal Engine 5 continue to cause problems: Borderlands 4 is still heavily criticized for its performance, while the other content is only partially a reason for the criticism.
Moreover, there have been problems recently as well: Capcom, for example, did not exactly cover themselves in glory with Monster Hunter: Wilds or Dragon’s Dogma 2 and released two technically flawed games. To this day, the performance issues in Dragon’s Dogma 2 have not been resolved, players feel abandoned, as updates have been absent until now. With Monster Hunter Wilds, it took a year to get the issues under control.
Crimson Desert is an action-adventure with RPG elements and an open world. It comes from the developers of Black Desert and is set to release in 2026. We at MeinMMO will tell you everything about the release date, editions, trailers, and more: Crimson Desert: Everything about release, platforms, editions & multiplayer at a glance
