MS Executive says Devs will need to learn how to work around Slower SSD on XSX

[DonFerrari]

shikamaru317 said:

I really don't think that the slower SSD is going to be a big issue for XSX. We're still looking at I believe a 40x I/O speed increase compared to the archaic 5400 RPM laptop hard drive that was used in base Xbox One, that is a massive increase. We also have to remember that MS claims to have worked a bit of software wizardry to partially offset the disadvantage of their slower SSD, with their Velocity Architecture which is designed to optimize texture streaming and reduce the CPU overhead of decompressing textures. Those claims could be secret sauce bunk, but if they turn out to be true it will offset alot of the disadvantage of the slower SSD. Xbox Series X also has access to DirectX12 Ultimate features, such as Direct Storage, which is designed to further optimize texture streaming.

We also have to remember that 3rd party multiplat devs always try to make things simple for themselves and optimize for the lowest common denominator, then scale up from there, the vast majority of them are not going to do extra work to take advantage of PS5's faster SSD when it comes to things like faster flight or having no elevator loading screens like have been talked about as an advantage of PS5's SSD, so the PS5's SSD advantage will mostly show itself with faster initial load times and fast travel times and maybe a bit less noticeable level of detail pop-in on 3rd party multiplat games. It'll mainly be the 1st/2nd party devs who are able to take full advantage of PS5's faster SSD.

We also have to remember that there are 2 very good reasons why MS went with a slower SSD:

1. Price. A custom SSD like the one Sony used is going to be alot more expensive than the basically off the shelf SSD XSX is using.
2. Expandable storage. MS wanted users to be able to easily expand their storage, so they went with an internal SSD that was roughly the same speed as the SSD cartridges you will be able to buy and plug into the port on the back of the system. Sony on the other hand, while claiming to have expandable storage, won't be able to sell SSD's as fast as their expensive custom internal SSD, so you'll have to expand it's storage with a slower off the shelf SSD, which will handicap the performance of any games that are designed to take full advantage of the fast internal SSD if you install them on your 2nd SSD.

You are somewhat wrong. The improvements they put in Velocity Architeture (that they didn't detail) is sure to have some impact, but at the same time Sony put more into the I/O than simply a faster SSD. So even if the API or software wizardry helps somewhat the hardware optmization would still be above it (even more because the SW can be changed and improved over time), PS5 have more priority levels, more connections, better general compression, better direct access, etc.

Second you inverted the SSD expansion. For Sony you will be able to use third party SSDs (or HDs) for expansion or you can substitute the one in PS5 (or play directly from expansion) if the SSD have enough speed (as said by Mark Cerny you would need over 7Gb/s for similar performance if the SSD misses the priority levels) and form factor fits in the bay. But for MS you would have the same option fro expansion, but if you want to play directly from the SSD new gen games you would need propietary drive.