Rumor: PS5 announcement coming mid 2019 and more info at PSX 2019

[Pemalite]

Intrinsic said:

And its not just about loading times, its also about streaming in assets to avoid pop in or sectional loading. As these assets become bigger so will the bandwidth required to stream them in.

There are other ways to get around that issue, namely compression, which tends to be CPU heavy... A few games of the 7th gen took that route for instance to get around the low bandwidth of the DVD/BD-Rom drive.

Intrinsic said:

And dare I say.... it may even end up being cheaper for them to use nand flash storage than using a HDD. Lets take that 1TB size as an example. I have no doubt that by 2020 it shouldn't cost them as OEMs more than $40 for an M.2 sata QLC nand flash SSD. But then these are consoles we are talking about. What stops them from just all out skipping the M.2 drive and solder the storage modules directly onto the board instead. How much would that cost them then? Definately less than $40.

Absolutely nothing stops them from soldering it directly to the motherboard.

Intrinsic said:

 And while I get that consoles pretty much always go the cheapest route thats not always the case. Some times the value of a component with regards to the genera architecture of the system design will take precedence. Like using GDDR5 even though there were cheaper options. Or like using a vacum chamber even though they could have used a cheaper cooling solution ad just made it bigger.

Well. The Xbox One did go with DDR3... And the Playstation 4 wasn't using the fastest GDDR5 anyway... And the Switch is using LPDDR4.
Not to mention the consoles only had 8GB of the stuff.

Price is the most important factor to building a console, they are cost sensitive devices that cannot have high-end components.

Intrinsic said:

I believe that if there is a single benefit to be gained from using nand flash storage then they would go with that instead. Especially when considerring future proofing the platform.

Microsoft used NAND with the Xbox 360, granted it was only 4GB, but the precedent is there.

KBG29 said:

At the start of next gen External drives will be necessary as internal M.2 Storage would be limited to 1- 2TB due to cost. As we move into the generation, SSD Capacity is expected to make exponential leaps, while HDD has little out look for capacity gains.

How sure are you about that?
Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording and Microwave-assisted recording are all next-gen mechanical HDD technologies that should push HDD capacities up towards 20 Terabytes per drive in a 3.5" form factor before 2020.

Mechanical Disks have stagnated for the last few years, just like CPU's and GPU's, but that won't last forever.

KBG29 said:

By 2024 or the mid way point for next gen, we will very likely be looking at 8 - 16TB SSD's in the price range of 1 & 2TB HDD's today. People willing to pay $500, $1,000, $1,500 or more will have 32, 64, & 128TB options.

People have been claiming SSD's will have exponential increases in capacities for years... And we are still at only 500GB in the Mid-Range, 120GB in the low-end.

KBG29 said:

If Sony sticks with HDD, they will be limited to slow read speeds all gen, and eventuallly they will hit a wall in capacity. HDD is short term gain, mid term loss, and early obsolescence. SSD is a short term loss, with midterm gain, and late life prosperity.

High-end mechanical disks should give a DRAM-less QLC nand SSD a run for it's money, especially in sequential reads.
Especially hybrid drives.

I mean shit... EMMC Nand drives make me want to take up smoking meth, I would prefer a semi-decent 5400rpm mechanical disk over those, especially if it's a hybrid drive.