Game players had held out hope that the latest news would not come to pass. It has been revealed that the storage size of the PS5 SSD is much smaller than was initially expected. The official specs put the storage at 664GB, as opposed to the original promise of 1TB.
When it comes to the next-gen console, storage space will play a significant and vital role. Nevermore so than for those gamers who choose to stick to the AAA fare. Many of the more popular games, such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Destiny, are prone to gobbling up and eating away at free space in massive amounts.
This results in gamers having to store their other games on the cloud, in an effort to make enough room for these type games. Gamers have already had to deal with this shuffling of games issue since the years of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. However, this issue will be at the forefront of many gamer’s minds with next-gen consoles.
The storage issue arises from the fact that the new custom SSD drive works in conjunction with improvements in the game speed and load times on the next-gen console. As many in the gaming genre are aware of, SSD technology is a literal generational forward leap over the traditional hard drives of decades ago. However, the logistics demand that such a jump in technology will and does require a somewhat hefty financial investment.
Gamers will still have the option to hook up an external storage source. However, the same superior experience will not be there on any of the older hard drives. This indicates that gamers may have to choose to split up their games and keep the biggest and the best located on the SSD.
In PS5 previews in Japan, it is reported that the 825GB default SSD will not be fully available to gamers when they finally get their hands on the console. It has been reported that there will only be 664GB available for gamers to install games and to save any data. The remainder of the storage space is reportedly taken up by the system’s software.
Sony has already spoken out in regard to some of the game’s storage requirements, which will serve to give gamers a look at what is ahead. For example, a simple game such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure is stated to require 32GB of space. The popular game Ultimate Edition of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is stated as requiring 105GB—just shy of requiring one-sixth of the console’s total available memory.
Although Xbox Series X gamers will be in a somewhat similar boat, their SSD does prove to appear slightly more significant to the tune of a little over 850GB of space. With the more popular games taking up more and more space, the fact that Microsoft’s console offers a slightly larger amount of space may translate into a larger amount of sales when compared to Sony’s PS5.