| Pyro as Bill said: 50GB isn't the maximum size for a PS4/XBO game. 50GB is only the BR limit. The new CoD is expected to need 130GB. You couldn't fit more than 3 of those on a 500GB HD. Switch could use a campaign and multiplayer cart each and wouldn't lose 1/3 of it's storage in the process. SD only has to worry about read speed and it's ~equal to HDD at 90-95 and can go much higher. SSD in consoles is interesting. People are already upgrading to 2TB HD for PS4/XBO and that's going to be very, very expensive using SSD. Not to mention 4K video and other assets are going to increase game sizes even further. 130GB of video content at 1080p becomes 520GB at 4K, so faster transfer speeds required. BR's speed and size is going to be a bottleneck. If Sony/MS move to carts next gen, then the HD size won't have to be as big, making SSD more economical and much faster. If not, then surely it would be better to use multiple, tiny, micro-SD cards as storage instead of a much bigger, spinning drive, assuming SD cards continue to plummet in price. |
Well, I stand corrected about the maximum size. I wasn't updated. Still your point is quite fallace. It's only a game game with that size. Apart from CoD, which isn't out yet, all games use only 1 BR disc. This is a list of install size for PS4 games, . The ones above 50GB are bundles:
https://www.finder.com/complete-list-playstation-4-install-sizes-460-titles
As you can see the average size is probably around 25GB, even less. And for physical disks that's temporary space, a cache that one can delete at any time, without any trouble on PS4 since to start a game reinstalliation takes only few seconds. I've been told in the XB1 is much, much longer. But they can use external HDDs some that balance it. Also the new consoles all have a 1TB (or more) SKU which costs a reasonable price. The 500GB HDD is going to be a thing of the past, if it isn't already.
And yes, the SD card reading speed is close to the one of the HDDs and that is the one that matter the most. Also the SD cards come with some benefits, since there is no seek time on flash memory. But they are NOT SSD as some other people clearly thought. Also SSD on consoles are currently nearly useless (again, seek times apart) because both consoles have a SATA II bus instead of a SATA III, needed for best, real SSD performances.
Anyway, personally I had already predicted that the next console(s) could be a tablet running on SD Cards. It made sense. It's just that I didn't expect one to come out so early. But SD cards are IMO the future for gaming. They are getting bigger, cheaper and faster everyday, and one can carry them in a pocket. Their only major problem is that they are so small that it is too easy to lose one. :D
