Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
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Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#2It's about time. SSDs have been around a very long time, and without a supported way of swapping out the internal hard drive, console gamers are penalized with long waits vs PCs where SSDs have become fairly standard.
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#3One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk.
People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S.
I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 external spinning drives to their new-generation consoles. 1TB of SSD space is enough for maybe 12 or 14 games, maximum. "Serious" console gaming people buy many more games than that...
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#4It's about time. SSDs have been around a very long time, and without a supported way of swapping out the internal hard drive, console gamers are penalized with long waits vs PCs where SSDs have become fairly standard.
In terms of overall console failure rates and unhappy end users, it has to be a huge relief to the xbox and ps5 hardware dev teams to remove anything with moving parts. The long term reliability and failure rates for rotating 2.5/3.5" HDDs vs NVME SSD will be very different.
The limiting factor for SSD endurance is volume of writes, which can be very carefully controlled in a walled-garden console OS+app design. Ordinary consumers are already very unlikely to run into write-endurance issues with something like a samsung nvme m2.2280 512GB-1TB SSD in a desktop PC.
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#5One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk. People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S. I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 exte…
A friend really wanted me to play Destiny 2 with him. I was going to give it a shot during one of their free weekends, but didn't do it because my gaming laptop's hard drive is only 500GB, and I didn't want to delete half a dozen games or so just to install Destiny. I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually losing potential players because of it - if the download had been half the size, they certainly could have converted me.
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#6One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk. People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S. I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 exte…
Ahhh, remember those days when you would get back from the shop with a cartridge, rip off the shrink rap, drop it in the slot, hit the on button and you were playing straight away in seconds. Good times.
Fallout 76 was something like a 45gb install and then a 50gb day 1 "patch"...
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#7One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk. People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S. I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 exte…
> I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 external spinning drives to their new-generation consoles.
The real question is: How many games will support that configuration?
A game written for a slower HDD can always be run on an SSD, either with no improvement or an improved experience. But a game specifically designed for an SSD may be unplayable or even unstable on a system with an HDD.
We aren't used to this yet, because they're so rare, as games are designed for the lowest common denominator (i.e. HDDs). But sooner or later an SSD will just be a minimum requirement, and if you lack it that open world game might lock up if you move too fast.
Heck some games might just do a speed test and refuse to even run.
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#8This article didn't talk deep enough about PS5 custom storage chip controller or I missed it.
Reference:
1. https://youtu.be/4ehDRCE1Z38?t=480
2. https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1205112-i%E2%80%99ve-di...
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#9One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk. People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S. I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 exte…
They have mentioned a few times (though nothing with specific numbers) that games have a lot of data redundancy to work around poor HDD seek times.
Given the drive speed it might be nice if games could auto-archive into a USB-attached device. The XBox requires custom SSD hardware for expansion (those weird non-USB drives?) and the PS5 will require swapping out the SSD entirely to expand usable space.
... but sequentially copying a compressed archive to a fast USB3.1 device might not be so bad for games not currently in use.
Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming
#10One really good example of an Xbox One game that has grown to truly bloated proportions is Destiny 2. The loading times are multiple minutes per map section now. Total game is about 105GB on disk. People have even resorted to using external 256GB SATA3 SSDs in USB3.0 enclosures, which are faster than the internal 5400 rpm HDD in an Xbox One S. I do think we will still see a lot of people connecting USB3.0/USB3.1 exte…
Ahhh, remember those days when you would get back from the shop with a cartridge, rip off the shrink rap, drop it in the slot, hit the on button and you were playing straight away in seconds. Good times. Fallout 76 was something like a 45gb install and then a 50gb day 1 "patch"...
That sounds like a lot more effort and time than just downloading 95gb.