It’s a busy news day for games today. The DOOM Eternal news was quickly swept aside after PlayStation, and Wired dropped new info on the PlayStation 5. Yep, the name is official. The Wired article is an excellent read with new info about the controller, raytracing, revamped user-interface, and more.
I wanted to touch on the SSD coming to the PS5. Specifically, how it could change the way we install games
Wired’s Peter Rubin talks about how the game installation will be a little different than the PS4. Sony’s Mark Cerny is then quoted as saying, “Rather than treat games like a big block of data, we’re allowing finer-grained access to the data.” Rubin speculates this could mean picking and choosing what part of the game you want to install and later delete.
With PS5 games coming packed on 100GB optical disks, having options to decide what part of the game you want on your hard drive is damn near a necessity.
I have a couple of external drives lying right beside my Xbox One. You have to when Red Dead Redemption 2 takes up just over 100 GB. Add another 90-ish for Halo 5: Guardians, and I’m well on my way to filling up the hard drive packed inside the console.
While Rubin talks about how it might work, we have seen custom game installations already in action. When 343 Industries got around to fixing Halo: The Master Chief Collection, they added a feature they dubbed “intelligent delivery.” It lets you pick and choose which portion of each game to install. Don’t want Halo: CE’s multiplayer, you can have your Xbox One skip it.
A similar feature on the next batch of hardware would be fantastic. Especially since both consoles are coming with SSDs built-in. But it does raise the question about how external storage will be handled.
What if you hooked up a regular external hard drive? It would have an obvious effect on load times, but would it have an impact anywhere else?
Being able to pick and choose what portions of a game are on your console would help big time. And depending on the SSD size, most gamers might not even have to worry about external storage.
With PS5 games confirmed to be a 100GB discs, a 1TB hard drive is the absolute minimum Microsoft and Sony can ship with. 2TB would be better.
As for the games themselves, Bluepoint Games’ Marco Thrush praised the SSD. “The SSD has me really excited,” said Thrush. “You don’t need to do gameplay hacks anymore to slow players down – lock them behind doors, anything like that.”
Bluepoint Games, makers of the Shadow of the Colossus remake, also teased they are “working on a big one right now” for PS5.
Wired and PlayStation gave us another peek at the PlayStation 5 today, but the agonizing wait for the full blowout continues.