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EricHiggin on 07 November 2017
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Pemalite said:

Well. When the Playstation 4 launched, 500GB mechanical disks were some of the cheapest storage solutions available.
Shift from 2013 to 2017, where have hard drives gone? 1 Terabyte seems to have repalced the 500GB drives as the sweet spot in terms of cost efficiency.
By 2020? At this rate we might be looking at 2 Terabytes of mechanical storage, provided there are no component shortages/disasters that blow that out.

SSD's though, still aren't cheap enough. An SSD fitting in the same cost-range as a 1 Terabyte drive of $79 AUD would net you 120/128GB today.
Of course we can still add more stacked layers to NAND chips and fabricate them at smaller geometry sizes, but that is still asking for a 5x - 10x fold increase in capacities for the same price in just a few years. - I just don't see it happening.

And that is provided there are no NAND shortages... Which happens all the time, especially prior to big product launches like the iPhone.

A 500GB 3.5" would have been cheaper though, and they didn't go that route. The size of the console shell and size of the HDD itself, clearly was more important than saving money on the HDD itself. Another factor that could lead to a better or worse storage option next gen.

SSD's are expensive still and the tech isn't quite there just yet, your right, but in 3 years time, 1TB could be within reason. 2TB might be a bit of a stretch. I would think PS would rather use the SSD, and let you buy an external HDD if you want more storage space. When I look at PS4 hardware decisions like the 8GB of GDDR5, it says to me, PS can really make it happen if the possiblitiy is in the ballpark, to make sure the console is as future proof as possible.

Shortages are a possibility, but I remember reading about GDDR5 being unlikely in the PS4 due to availability and price, yet it ended up happening, and 8GB worth at that. When someone like PS comes along and you know your basically guaranteed around a steady 100M units worth of sales, that's worth the hassle of making it happen most of the time.