Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

I really do wonder how they're going to work storage though. All these new consoles have so little and they're pushing digital hard. They can't possibly want people to only buy 3 games and delete them when moving into new ones while also pushing GaaS....

Really curious to see Sony's price though. Do they compete at price or hope brand power and exclusives carries them as the expensive/weak option.

Have Sony mentioned the storage capacity size of PS5 ?
500 GB should minimum size to compete with 512 GB of Xbox Series storage capacity size.

@NEStalgia Because games will be smaller in file size. The reason why so many games have bloated file sizes is because of duplicated assets.

The HDD is a relatively slow storage medium; because it depends on the speed of the physical disc and laser moving around. If you want to load a level or world, it pays off to have all the required assets located closely together on the HDD. This means that the assets can be sourced faster, because they're located close together, reducing load times. As a result, developers duplicate models and textures. If a specific asset is used in multiple levels, it will be duplicated in the data files and placed near the levels that require them.

With the SSD this problem is mediated. Because loading from all sites of the SSD is nearly instantaneous, they don't need to worry about the location of assets and textures when calling them in during loading. It's partly the reason why Switch games are a lot smaller I think, because they don't rely on a slow HHD.

Now, that doesn't stop EA from launching a terribly optimised games that's just as big as any other game, because they simply don't care. But I expect that most games will see a reduction in average file size.

My brother has had his fill of MHW, so we're moving on to EDF 4.1.

This'll be my first foray into the EDF series, should be interesting.

@Octane Talk is cheap. They keep saying that, but nobody has even put up a reasonable example of the kind of size difference we're talking about. It's like when politicians talk about "we'll fix the automation problem by training people for the Jobs of the Future! (whatever those might be, but we don't actually know, we just assume there will be something, and we'll promise to do "something" to make everyone ready for it!")

Games are up to 100GB with 4k textures. Even if they cut that in HALF, even if they cut that 2/3, we're still looking at 30+GB games and only 800 or so GB usable storage? Not going to fly for long. Both MS and Sony are going to have to address that once drives start clogging. And add-on SSDs that cost half or more of the total console's cost isn't much of an answer.

No mistake, the storage bottleneck is going to be the endless complaint going forward, along with expensive storage upgrades. They want to push everyone to digital and then take the storage away. It reminds me of Vita memory cards.

@NEStalgia We had a max of 1TB with consoles this gen, and most big games were around 50GB. So if the average game is less than that, I don't see the problem.

@Octane We didn't have a max of 1TB, you could plug in any old cheap HDD and go, which virtually every digital player did. You could get like 6TB for $150 to add on. The new consoles were talking about adding 1TB costing almost as much as another whole console let alone adding another 6.

@Octane

You're not taking into account the added file sizes due to graphical improvements though. Higher texture resolutions, higher poly counts, higher audio quality, etc.
I mean FFXV had a 4K texture pack download for the Steam version and it was like 80GB. Just for textures!
I'll believe in lower file sizes when I see it!

And that's not taking into account that all the old current gen games still have huge file sizes. They're not gonna go back and recompile all those old games are they? So those current games alone could easily take up the hard drive space!

@NEStalgia You can plug in an SSD this time around. And yes, an SSD is currently more expensive, but a HDD literally won't work, it's becoming outdated. SSDs will drop down in price over time. Also, deleting and installing games should be faster as well, making it less of a nuisance. I don't see a reason to worry until I've experienced it myself.

@Dezzy I think Microsoft and Sony know what they are doing. If they think 500GB to 1TB is enough, then I don't see a reason to worry too much yet. And yes, I don't think older games get optimised for SSD storage, but you can hook up a HDD if you want to. Or just keep your old console. Or just delete them when you're done playing. There are plenty of options.

@Dezzy The old games, at least on XSeX (Sony refuses to confirm) you can still run those from a regular HDD, so there's no immediate loss there if you were using cheap storage before. The exception is for games that are getting "upgraded" for free and become "next gen" games, but I'd presume they'd benefit from said size reduction if so. However, I agree entirely. I still don't believe their claims at all. And not one company has offered an example of the size difference they expect. Like I said, even if they halve the size, that's nowhere near good enough at the cost per GB we're talking.

@Octane There's a big difference between adding a $50 HDD, or a $150 HDD with TONS of storage, verus adding a $250+ drive that only adds another 1TB. The cost per GB is massive. HDD may well be obsolete, but look at the cost difference between normal, standard, SATA SSDs and these bleeding edge nvmes. That's the real issue. Instead of just upgrading to SSD to give a massive boost and keep up with the requirements they took the absolute most expensive possible option right off the whitepapers before it was even in production and said "you're going to have to buy only that" rather than going with the rational option of mainstream SSDs that are already coming down in price and are readily available and are many many times the performance of the HDDs.

Deleting and installing games - FROM DISC - may be faster. But remember, both companies are flogging their DIGITAL consoles. How many ISPs are going to love people re-installing 20-100GB games constantly? Comcast in the US already imposes 1TB/mo soft caps. And that's the largest ISP, by far, in the nation. The obvious XBox solution is moving it to a regular HDD back and forth. But that's slow and involves file system management console players aren't used to. It's better than nothing, but it also isn't great. It's kind of like going back to cartridges. Put a game in, play it until it's done, then move onto another. But that puts a hole in the whole digital model.

@NEStalgia Solution; don't buy the digital-only console.

@Octane Heh, I don't think that's the solution Sony actually wants people to choose though.... which goes back to my original point that it wasn't a smart decision.

Not to mention that "next gen" feels a lot like going back to 1996 if you really "insert disc, wait for load/install, play game, change disc, wait for load/install, play that game." 2 generations of moving to digital libraries, and we're back to swap discs and load? IMO this storage debacle is the best advertisement for Stadia anyone could have concocted. It's even appealing to me at this point!

Even "cartridges" with small amounts of solid state storage would be preferable if that's the answer.

For me, personally (and many others) "game sharing" is also a factor in the move to digital. For me, with XB as my main multiplat box, the PS5 is for the exclusives only, so the digital PS5 is the obvious choice in general, but even on the XB I can't imagine buying many physical games...especially with "game sharing" as a factor. But this storage solution does make the idea of doing so much less unappealing that on the old consoles.

Isn't that the opposite direction of what these companies want us to move?

Edit: Not to mention the games where patches are bigger than the disc data, and all the GaaS content. The disc version ends up solving nothing there to keep re-loading.

The wait is finally over, PS5 event on Wednesday:

They mention games and updates on previously announced games, but surely they're going to reveal the launch date, launch games and price as well, right?

Heh, well, launch games might be covered in their updates .... Nobody wants a price, right? I'd certainly hope they'll reveal that & any other details, too

Are you really suggesting they somehow have our best interests at heart and know it's all we'll need?

Of course they don't. They're just trying to minimize costs while making it large enough that people will be willing to buy it (they couldn't make it just 200GB because some games might legitimately be that size by the end of the generation)

@Dezzy It's in their interest to provide a satisfactory product, so in a way, yes.

@Octane

Lol well I'm normally the one who believes in the value of the market more than anyone else.

Why do you think Nintendo hasn't really done anything to fix the joycon drift issue if it's in their interest to provide the most satisfactory product possible?

@Dezzy Because it's Nintendo

Anyway, my point is, with every new generation games have, I dunno, tenfolded in size or something like that. I don't think we'll see 500GB this gen, because if optimised for the SSD, they don't have to be. The size of the storage is a balance between plenty of storage and a good price customers are willing to pay. And if that 500GB Series S is full after 2 next gen games, they have failed.

Only Nintendo gets away with non-existent storage space in this industry.

@Octane Just wait until you see a digital only Switch that still only has 32GB memory