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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

#21

Post by gameswithgo »

ardit33 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it but this SSD story has been plastered all over the news by the PR machine, mainly because the new consoles have no other inovations whatsoever.... No, it is not going to usher a new area of gaming, just make game have less 'loading' screens, and perhaps larger open worlds.... but it is no near the innovation and changes we experiences in the 90s and early 2000's.... Let me say in a more popular langu…

i think you have become way too cynical. of course we don’t have the huge leaps we used to. the marginal utility of twice as many polygons or pixels is much less now. the effort that goes into these advances we do get is much more than it was nonetheless, and borders on magic.

amazing time to be alive for computing hardware power and great to see the consoles letting us fully leverage it

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#22

Post by ThatPlayer »

dormando wrote: post #9
walrus01 wrote: post #3

One 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 sequenti…

Playstation 5 doesn't swap out the SSD, it's an additional slot for a PCI-E nvme SSD. The onboard SSD that comes with it doesn't seem to be removable.

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#24

Post by Nextgrid »

walrus01 wrote: post #3

One 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…

There's absolutely no excuse for why a console released in 2016 still had 5400 rpm spinning rust. Those drives are barely usable in low-end laptops, and you're trying to run games from it?

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#25

Post by nemothekid »

jhack wrote: post #20
ardit33 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it but this SSD story has been plastered all over the news by the PR machine, mainly because the new consoles have no other inovations whatsoever.... No, it is not going to usher a new area of gaming, just make game have less 'loading' screens, and perhaps larger open worlds.... but it is no near the innovation and changes we experiences in the 90s and early 2000's.... Let me say in a more popular langu…

You can tell someone hasn't watched the Ratchet & Clank demo from the other day[0]. The SSDs in these consoles go far beyond short load times. They can radically change how games are made and designed. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnG-3-r6-Q

Wow, I'm not going to believe that's realtime in my hands. I started the video thinking "whats so special about this", and when they started going interdimensional I realized either this is very cool or just hype.

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#26

Post by dormando »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #22
dormando wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sequenti…

Playstation 5 doesn't swap out the SSD, it's an additional slot for a PCI-E nvme SSD. The onboard SSD that comes with it doesn't seem to be removable.

Ah yes, I misremembered: there's an additional slot but a very specific spec requirement. They'll be whitelisting individual devices.

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#27

Post by wmf »

Someone1234 wrote: post #7
walrus01 wrote: post #3

One 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.…

I don't think the new consoles will even install games onto external drives.

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#28

Post by jimmaswell »

ardit33 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it but this SSD story has been plastered all over the news by the PR machine, mainly because the new consoles have no other inovations whatsoever.... No, it is not going to usher a new area of gaming, just make game have less 'loading' screens, and perhaps larger open worlds.... but it is no near the innovation and changes we experiences in the 90s and early 2000's.... Let me say in a more popular langu…

The N64 looked way better, loaded faster, had a better controller, and to me had a better game library as a whole. The PS1 had comparatively horrible architectural choices like no built-in z-buffer, texture filtering, or floating point processing. Apparently N64 sold less per year available though. What did everyone see in the PS1?

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#29

Post by resist_futility »

ardit33 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it but this SSD story has been plastered all over the news by the PR machine, mainly because the new consoles have no other inovations whatsoever.... No, it is not going to usher a new area of gaming, just make game have less 'loading' screens, and perhaps larger open worlds.... but it is no near the innovation and changes we experiences in the 90s and early 2000's.... Let me say in a more popular langu…

You don't count a load time of almost 10 times faster as a generational leap? Ray tracing right now is just a gimmick, I don't care about puddles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqV7BNoQEr4

Re: Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher in a New Era of Gaming

#30

Post by anamexis »

resist_futility wrote: post #29
ardit33 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it but this SSD story has been plastered all over the news by the PR machine, mainly because the new consoles have no other inovations whatsoever.... No, it is not going to usher a new area of gaming, just make game have less 'loading' screens, and perhaps larger open worlds.... but it is no near the innovation and changes we experiences in the 90s and early 2000's.... Let me say in a more popular langu…

You don't count a load time of almost 10 times faster as a generational leap? Ray tracing right now is just a gimmick, I don't care about puddles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqV7BNoQEr4

It's a generational leap in game load times, but it's not a generational leap in gaming.
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