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

[Mr Puggsly]

Intrinsic said:

Mr Puggsly said:

I think they're gonna stick with standard HDDs for years to come simply because its more space for the price. Given the size of games now, I would hope the 9th gen launches with 2TB HDDs.

I strongly doubt they will. And for a number of reasons.

If consoles opt to go with HDDs again, then in about 3 years time they could find themselves as the only ones still using that antiquated technology. I mean right now even $300 laptops come with 128GB m.2 SSDs. And then there is performance. HDDs are slow. But lets put this into context; Right now we have ~5GB of RAM available for games in the current consoles. I think its safe to say that next gen that allotment will at the very least double. Using a HDD we already have games that take around 30 - 70 secs to load in a level or stage. If the RAM size doubles and game asset sizes double too then it will literally take twice as long to load up that level. We are going into a gen of higher rez textures on everything including shadows and the usual bump in general assets and code. Thats not going to be very pleasant at all.

I really don't think they will have any problem at all launching these consoles with 500GB on an M.2 drive. Those things cost around $70 right now on amazon which means that in about 18 months they could be down to as little as $50. That means it will cost Sony and MS (OEM pricing) as little as $30 for a 500GB M.2 SSD. They just launch with that and allow ext HDD support from day one so gamers can backup games they aren't actively playing. And even allow gamers upgrade their internal SSD if they want to.

Its simply the best way to go forward. They could even get 1TB drives for as little as $50 at the time. 

Thing is, the only real cost of going with an SSD is capacity. But it comes with a lot of benefits and ensures future proofing. But the second they put a HDD in there, they build in limitations that they will never be able to overcome for the rest of that generation. Because games are always built to the lowest spec....

While having 2TB in the box would be great.... that really means nothing to an end user. If asked to be able to store 32 games as opposed to 8 games in their consoles but then choose between an all round snappier UI and loading games in 15 seconds as opposed to 50 seconds..... its my guess that speed will win everytime. 

Well a SDD can certainly speed up load times, I don't think the X1 interface is sluggish due to the HDD. For example, my Windows 10 UI is a lot faster with the same HDD tech.

Maybe they use a combination of both though. Like 128GB (or smaller) SSD for OS functions snappy and a 2TB (maybe 4TB) HDD for games. Based on prices I'm seeing, that would still be cheaper than a single 2TB SSD and using two storage devices seems to speed up load times on 8th gen consoles.

I think 2020 is gonna be too soon to make the Switch to SSD. But its certainly looking like a feasible option at some point of the 9th gen.