Ratchet and Clank was a great showcase for the SSD!

Near instant loading, transitioning between worlds, seamless change from cutscene to gameplay. I've seen comparisons to other games like Titanfall 2 but having played the latter, its not as impressive as R&C, when you start taking into account how many assets are being streamed. I think this also impacts traversal speed which will benefit titles like Spiderman: Miles Morales and Horizon 2: Forbidden West. Just imagine instant world loading in God of War 2, the scale of boss fights will increase tremendously, or the rumored Silent Hill reboot, changing the environment instantly without breaking immersion. Horizon 2 & Days Gone 2 will have bigger, denser, and richer worlds.

We're just scratching the surface here.

Titanfall runs off 7200 rpm drives, the XBox SX's SSD is many, many, many times faster it will likely be able to do most of the same things. 

How does the I/O compare? Isn't that part of the equation when developers praise the PS5 architecture? 

thats just secret sauce mumbojumbo just like the velocity architecture

In all honesty the amount of gameplay situations that require a character to jump from one location into a completely different one at the snap of a finger are limited, and even those can still likely be programmed to function on a very, very fast XSX NVMe.

People act like that's slow, but it's way, way, way faster than the standard 7200 rpm HDD that's been used in the past.

For stuff like "well what if you want to seamless move from scripted cutscene to gameplay seamlessly?" ... things like Final Fantasy VII REmake already do this just fine using a regular slow ass PS4 HDD.

It is absolutely possible on Xbox 360. Just not with that level of fidelity as you cannot be streaming assets, you need to hold everything in working set memory... It's a memory issue remember.

That is ultimately the issue the SSD's will to an extent... Resolve.

I just completed Final Fantasy 8 last night on the Nintendo Switch for example... And the end boss fight against Ultimecia has you warping to a dozen different locations, without a stutter, without a pause... How was that achieved when the PS1 only had 300kb/s of transfer rates? It held more data (several levels ahead) in memory.

The SSD's isn't enabling a new "thing" in this aspect, but what it is enabling is for it to be done at quality levels not possible before.

This is my point exactly.
It's not a new concept, it's not enabling anything new in this instance, but the effects being employed are more or less a characteristic of the significantly increased memory bandwidth, memory size, CPU capabilities, GPU capabilities and more... And the SSD just means that we don't need level data for the next few successive levels in Ram, so we can focus more overall memory on bolstering the current assets being displayed on screen.

But the quality level can be retained as a developer need not have everything in DRAM.

I also recall it in Shivering Isles when you warped from Oblivion to Shivering Isles, that was an amazing transition.

If we had as many developers praising the velocity architecture, compared to the many developers praising the I/O, I would agree. 

frankly i feel it is because the IO/SSD is the only thing that keeps the ps5 afloat vs the whole XSX package thus getting more individual recognition.
people just ignore what MS is doing with their compression tech because it doesnt fit the narrative

It brought enemies onto the screen, changed the visuals, and the layout of the world you were in. And it happened very fast. Personally I don’t really care if you’re transported to a whole new world if you don’t interact with it. Most of the dimension jumping in the event was on rails and seemed set up to play out that way. Now maybe in the final game you can jump whenever you want and fully explore everything, who knows. 

It was impressive but it was impressive because the PS5 annihilates the PS4 in all specs, not because of the SSD. Considering the context of this thread, it wasn’t a telling reveal for the PS5. I mean, what, in one PS5 game launching who knows when, maybe you’d have a second longer blue transition screen on XSX, maybe it would be just as fast? What a gargantuan difference.

I am certain that the Devs that are working on their games will overcome the SSD shortcomings of the Xbox Series X in comparison to the PS5. Granted, I also agree on the notion that 3rd Party Devs will not be too concerned about the difference in SSD Speed between the two. Either way, not too big of a concern from my end so long as the games themselves are good.