Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@NEStalgia It's not about processing power, it's about SSD bandwidth. I believe that the compatible SSDs are only starting to come out this year; you're looking at a gen 4 SSD like the NVMe 4.0. However, they are still testing compatibility. So you can't just hook up any old SSD you have laying around, it won't work.

@Octane This bleeding edge "so advanced the stuff that's needed doesn't actually exist yet and when it does the component will cost 3x the rest of the system but be obsolete in 8 months" garbage is why I left the "PC master race" to begin with. The more this goes on the more I feel like just building a power rig again is the "cheap and easy" option again. First time that's seemed true in over a decade. Only catch is I'd want to operate it 100% without a keyb/mouse once it's set up.

Yeah, that's really not too big a problem with PCs these days, @NEStalgia ..... Unless you're insisting on being able to play all the most demanding games on the most ridiculously high settings, you can certainly keep a decent set-up going for a few years, at least

@NEStalgia Alright, but..
1. Nobody is forcing you to buy a console, you're free to build a PC.
2. You're not forced to buy more storage either.
3. If it's already outdated tech by the time it releases then people will also complain. Can't please everyone.

If it'll HAVE to be Sony's own expanded storage option, there's the concern it'll be deliberately over-priced, like Vita memory sticks were

@BruceCM I wonder how Xbox will handle that in that case, since they use proprietary storage.

Sony confirmed it won't require proprietary storage; but they're compiling a list of SSDs that are compatible. I believe Nintendo did a similar thing for Switch with SD cards.

That's cool, then, @Octane .... For Series X, you'd still be able to use existing external HDDs & SSDs, though? I'm sure that was explained somewhere recently, so you wouldn't be forced to buy the Seagate special cards, although those would probably be ultra fast

@BruceCM I think they said you can use HDDs (presumably only for older games, and not Series X exclusives), but I thought SSDs were proprietary.

“Games optimized for Xbox Series X and the Velocity Architecture need to be run from the internal SSD or the Expandable Storage Drive.”

At least, that's how I understood this. The Expandable Storage Drive is the proprietary cards only, right?

Horizon 2 confirmed for 2021. I really hope this and Zelda don't come out at the same time again lol.

@Octane Yeah, last built a gaming rig, I guess the next to the last was when SATA was replacing IDE ribbons....it was a mess....boards weren't compatible with drives, drives were PATA drives with SATA bridges, none of the drivers worked right, and the chipsets were a mess. Then there were the inevitable corruption issues. Windows wouldn't install without the garbage broken driver that never installed right from a floppy or boot CD (required because Windows didn't support SATA controllers natively yet!) The next time I got smart and did a RAID1 mirror of WD Raptor Xs....and the Intel RAID drivers FUBARed when the machine crashed once requiring the whole setup to be done again. Then the next box had a video card that would lock the system over and over. Switched it.....then for years lost a Raptor, then another Raptor, then 2 more video cards (At $400+ each!) and then the PSU went bad which was probably the whole problem all along frying the other parts....and it was a high end TT or Corsair PSU with braided cables and all that. $3k rig....with nothing but problems and failures from day 1.

So I bought a PS3 & 360 and never looked back. For the price of 1.5 video cards I got 2 consoles and zero problems.

The thing is consoles are supposed to be cheap without the woes and worry. And sony's giving us, what, an 850GB SSD and super premium priced bleeding edge SSDs to replicate the whole PC nightmare again? I swore I'd never go back to PC, but this is starting to replicate most of the annoyance anyway. Ugh!

@BruceCM @Octane XSeX has the tiny 1TB SSD, and the proprietary cards that will be overpriced, BUT it also allows standard spinning drive bulk storage. You can execute BC games right from bulk storage, but have to copy them to the local SSD(s) to play them if they're XSeX specific games. It doesn't sound like Sony will allow bulk storage, just high speed execution storage.

Sounds trivial but if you have a big library it matters. My 7+TB of XB1/360/OG games can still live on the spinner and even still run from the spinner and not eat any internal space on the SSD. The new games, I can get another cheap spinner, RAID box, or some such and store them all locally, even back them up locally to other arrays, and just copy them to SSD when I want to play them, even without buying the overpriced proprietary drives.

Sounds like with PS5 the only storage you can use is small expensive SSD,s with no bulk storage option. So XSeX works like PC. Performance SSD and separate bulk storage. That ties into X1 vs PS4. PS4 you can't copy data to multiple drives, you can only move it from one drive to another. X1 you can copy the games to as many drives as you want, but of course the FS is tied to your account so you can run it on someone else's box.

It's stuff like that that made me migrate to XB when going digital outside exclusives. But that being said, I'm not amazed at EITHER console with how they're handling really expensive, small SSDs along with the digital push era. It sounds like an argument made to sell streaming services.... SSD is still not suitable for bulk storage even on PC due to cost/capacity/needed capacity, and that's with good old "cheap" SATA SSDs in the running, not just the absurd NVMe stuff.

@Octane Huh, well I was wrong. Though that was early 2022 for certain. Though, I guess we'll see if it gets delayed.

Wonder how PS Now will handle PS5 exclusives. Given all this HDD mess, it might actually pay for me to just buy Now if it gets me the exclusives. From what I see, though, they REALLY want people to buy hardware so they're not so generous with that.

@link3710 I've always thought that it was early 2021 since it became known that it wasn't a launch title; because it fits in their release schedule. They always have at least one big game in March, April or May. Uncharted 4 in 2016, HZD in 2017, God of War in 2018, Days Gone in 2019, TLOU2 this year, and so it makes sense if they continue that trend with Horizon 2 in early 2021.

I personally don't see a game like Demon's Souls fill in that role, or Ratchet & Clank for that matter (if that isn't a launch title).

'Aiming' for 2021, so by no means confirmed 😝

I see it'll have red blight in the game. Can't think where that idea came from...

Any word on whether it'll have freeform climbing?

@NEStalgia Eurogamer speculated that you wouldn't be able to use an HDD to store PS5 games on, but also mentioned that this wasn't confirmed yet. So it can go either way.

Anyway, I'm going mostly physical, and install times should be reduced to almost zero, so I don't find this to be an issue.

Oh, maybe, @Octane .... At least there's @NEStalgia's option, then? At the moment, I don't think there's pricing for the official cards &, while Seagate is the launch partner, it's at least possible they'll allow others to create them as well I'm not planning to get either next gen console, anyway, so I'm not really too involved in it all! The games I hear about are mostly coming to PC, so I'm happy

Finished my first full VR game in Resident Evil 7. It was very fun, but the PSVR really does need an upgrade. That and of course it'll benefit from being attached to stronger hardware in general. Sometimes just sprinting in the game, it'd take a few seconds for the resolution/textures to stabilize, creating a really eye-straining headache effect. Wish I could compare it to a PC headset, but I have never had access to one. Either way, hoping for a much less bulky/less wired follow up

@Octane That would be a win if you could indeed use conventional drives as bulk storage. I almost can't see Sony doing that just based on how they handled device management in the past, but it would be nice. They tend to be......backward....like, Nintendo backward, when it comes to that sort of thing.

An optical drive is still slow no matter how you slice it, though I don't know the speed specs on UHDBD. But yeah, for physical it's certainly less of an issue. Digital buyers (and Sony WANTS us to all be digital buyers) need bulk storage options though.

@BruceCM Considering Seagate doesn't actually make SSDs at all, I'd guess there will be other options. They're fully in the platter world and just private label/custom buy drives. Same for WD. I think I'd regret getting back into the morass of PC again, but looking at the pricing and such of the next gen consoles, it sure makes it tempting. And half my XB library would port right over via "play anywhere" anyway. PC is so expensive and consoles were supposed to be a chaper alternative, but both companies seem bent on making console expenses comparable to PC!

Yeah, I think they're cards that slot into the Series X, @NEStalgia .... I think PCs are in a much better place now than when you had the problems you were talking about, though So, although it'd cost more to get the top-end gaming PC to start with, it wouldn't usually cost any more in the longer term, especially if you have enough know-how to do a lot of the upgrades yourself

@BruceCM When the prices are announced I'll have to do a cost/benefit of it all. I'm guessing one of the consoles still comes out ahead. At least XSeX will. PS...I love the exclusives, but at this point it's clear that's the only thing I'm interested in here, as either real PC or XSeX is a more PC like environment. I do like the new PS5 controllers more than any prior DS though, so there's that.

I also don't care about 4k or HDR even slightly in the near future. My big screen is a DLP 1080p front projector I don't see a need to replace any time soon, and my gaming screens are 23" pole mounted displays for a "cockpit" setup, and they don't even make displays with HDR or 4K in that size at the moment for any price; bigger monitors are too heavy for the mount (and would be too big to look at so close) and even if they did, if the budget is going into buying PS5s and XSeXes (or PCs) there's no budget for screens for quite some time. So I could go a bit cheaper there I suppose.

Besides, we all know a Playstation is only in it's "final evolution" when the Slim comes out.