PS5 GDC Reveal and PS5 specs/performance Digital Foundry Video analysis : 3.5 Ghz 8 core Zen 2 CPU along with 10.3 TF RDNA 2 RT capable and 16GB GDDR6 RAM and also super crazy fast 5.5 GB/Second S

[EricHiggin]

Pemalite said:

EricHiggin said:

While SNY's SSD tech may be somewhat more expensive than what MS is using, you'd think if a proprietary card was going to be in the same ballpark price wise, that SNY would have gone with that.

To me, SNY saw the price difference for creating something like MS has, and decided it was going to be way too expensive. Not just at launch either. For the effort SNY went to in creating some of the hardware, like the controller for the SSD, why they wouldn't go to the trouble of what MS did with a proprietary card says to me it's price that was the biggest problem.

That's not to say MS's card wouldn't be cheaper right off the bat based on it's tech, and maybe MS is willing to subsidize those cards to some degree. I also can't help but wonder if MS assumes most will just transfer over their existing external HDD's, or upgrade to a larger one based on the much cheaper market prices.

The cost over time also needs to be taken into account. A proprietary card only comes down in price a lot if MS keeps subsidizing it, or if they sell a boat load of consoles, while also convincing many to buy 1 card or more. Mass market gen 4 NVMe's will naturally drop in price much quicker, which also means lower prices, or faster speeds, and higher amounts of storage for the same old price as years go by.

It would be more expensive for Sony to take the propriety-memory card approach compared to Microsoft... It has to guarantee twice the bandwidth in a small form factor. - Might even be logistically impossible given current technological trends.

I would assume Microsoft would not be willing to subsidize the cards... If we were to take a look at Microsoft's prior business models in the console space... They usually price the consoles cheaper, then make-up the difference on accessories and games... The OG Xbox for example had the DVD attachment, Xbox 360 had the Wifi Dongle, Detachable HDD, Memory Cards and so on. - The Xbox One was initially priced higher to avoid allot of that.

Xbox Series X could be a return to form on this front.

In saying that, it does mean that there is the potential for larger SSD's in the future as Microsoft's approach to SSD technology isn't as propriety, so they should in theory be able to take advantage in advancements in SSD controller and NAND faster as they become cheaper and/or larger.

Keep in mind these memory cards aren't using a plane-jane NVMe drive, it's in a propriety package... Heck. I don't even know what it's interface bus is yet. (Likely PCI-E based, but the possibility exists for something else.)

Well the MS/XBSX solution is tiny. Really tiny. I don't see why it couldn't be made the size of a typical SSD 2280 stick. If they don't want it sticking out of the console too much, just make the slot deeper. It would still easily fit in your pocket, and wouldn't get lost as easily. The other option would be to make a proprietary 2280 type stick, that's still internal and as cheap as possible, without the external features. Which still wouldn't be "cheap".

Back then you typically had little option to add third party devices for certain aspects of the console, so you had to buy their product. As long as third party external devices can be plugged into the rear USB 3.? port, that's going to be the go to option for most, even if they split the price difference and get an external SSD. I have a hard time believing that MS won't subsidize those cards to some degree because otherwise they probably won't sell that many. $500 for XBSX and even just $79 for a 1TB SSD expansion card seems nuts, let alone higher yet.

How much advancement will be made using existing hardware though other than when a potential upgrade comes along? Not much was done with storage this gen, even with SSD's being available, though they did help speed things up a little bit. Will MS bother since PS nor MS did last gen? Faster wasn't really a great point on my part now that I think more about it, for either company, other than that PS5 needs a min speed third party NVMe. As for cheaper and larger storage, they both will be able to benefit from that over time, I just see PS5 having the advantage as nothing will be proprietary and won't have a SNY 'tax' on it.