SSDs back then were approx 70c per gig, rapidly declining in price. It didn't have to be 500GB, that's a lot of space,  a 150GB SSD could've worked in a starter pack. At ~100$, it's a good design move to ensure a big jump in data access speeds. Even another alternative: a 150GB SSD + 420GB 7200rpm drive would've been great.

My point is just that the PS's SSD is making noise, when it is such an easy upgrade nowadays and honestly barely needs to be mentioned as a feature. It's to be assumed nowadays that machines use SSDs or flash memory to propel software.

Yes it is, even X1X being premium didn't put SSD on it.

And devs when talking to Cerny about what they wanted most being SSD but knowing it was impossible because consoles are made under very tight budgets (reason why they also didn't increase RAM significantly).

I don't know what technical world you live in where games are designed for SSDs. You know that SSDs and spindle drives have been swappable from the beginning. Even an SSD plugged directly into the motherboard doesn't require custom development.

And Mechanical HDD's were 0.08 cents per gig verses 68 cents per gig on an SSD.

It's clear why they opted for a mechanical drive to start with.

A 150GB~ SSD wouldn't have been viable... Remember the OS/Reserved portion of the drive is a total 138GB on the Xbox One and the PS4 took a big chunk for the OS as well.

If you are suggesting a cache drive... That would have increased the bill of materials substantially, suddenly you need more interfaces to drives on the SoC/Chipset, more motherboard traces, more power delivery and you increase the complexity of the system which can result in more failure points theoretically.

Microsoft did release an Xbox One variant with an SSHD for what it was worth...

But in my opinion the 8th gen should have used 7200rpm drives from the outset with 120MB/s transfer rates rather than absolutely terrible 5400rpm drives which might do 50MB/s on a good day.

Even with the Xbox One X, it was a missed opportunity not to include a much faster 7200rpm HDD... Microsoft touted an upgrade to the SATA interface as some "new measure" to unlock extra performance, but that wasn't it... It helped during burst transfers which occurs when reading data from the Hard Drives Ram, but that was about it.

It was the faster Seagate 5400RPM drive that almost doubled sequential reads/writes in the Xbox One X, Microsoft could have taken it a step further still.

What make you the person to know who's right and who's wrong? If you're wrong, what should I care that you cling onto false ideas and hopes?

Not a single game engine is designed in function of the hard drive, if you have any facts to back up the opposite, please share your mystical knowledge.

Game engines are designed against graphical specs, cpu and ram. If you have some kind of revelation regarding hard drives and how they are involved in the development of game engines, then you might just break the internet.

I have a diploma in Software Engineering, and am the owner of a software development company. I've worked in network administration also for a few years. I know you don't want to start a cred war, but if we're here then we're here.

I'll try to calm my tone, because this isn't about e-peen. It's about truth, and we both want to see the truth.

So, the integration of SSDs doesn't change game design. It simply removes the past obstacles to game design so devs can finally focus on things that actually matter, like the interfaces, artificial intelligence, assets and general overal quality, and produce games faster. But it is an easy upgrade, just plug it in and it removes the limitations!

The disk is read to RAM, so of course the SSD will remove the need to pre-emptively cache the data to work around the limitations of HDDs. That's not the question.

The question is do devs need to tailor code to take advantage of the SSD. The answer is NO.

You (and Don) were arguing that the SSD allows things that could not be done before, but it's not true.

I won't go through the whole convo, but first post by Don:

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/reply.php?id=242074&quote=9127046

Everything could be done before, they were just either too slow, or they needed to be developed with crutches. The SSD simply REMOVES the obstacles, but no custom code or special magic code is involved to get anything done.

That's my point, it's a plug and play upgrade, and it doesn't require any applause! It has existed in PCs and Macs for years and is an obvious easy evolution. No need for a conference to explain how the SSD makes magic work, it's an obvious improvement with little engineering required.

Compare that to improvements in CPUs, GPUs and RAM, which require a lot of engineering to get real increases in performance and which game engines may exploit in a custom way, that is a true upgrade. THAT'S the discussion.

Just wait for the games to prove which console is superior... At the moment people are splitting hairs and just sticking to their guns.
Both machines are fantastic pieces of kit.

I know which console I would want for a game that pushes Ray Tracing... And I know which console I would want for an open world game.

This thread is about the SSD's in both.  It's not solely praising the PS5.  

Multiplat games are almost certainly going to be superior on XSX, you can't have different designs for both systems.  

It's just as trivial an upgrade as the CPU, GPU, etc.