Sure, meanwhile MS Flight Simulator renders the entire world on a HDD.

Also what does Demon Souls do with the SSD that no other game does?

 It may well be that the developer dropped the the shadows to medium while testing 4K, and left them there when they dropped the resolution   rather than do a whole new optimisation.

They are average yea but in order to have an average, the fps also needs to go higher than 60fps and maintain a 60fps or above more often than not for it to be a 60fps average otherwise it will be less. Not to mention the Series X also went below that 60fps as well quite a few times during one of the levels but the devs still kept the resolution throughout the game which I am assuming is because throughout the rest of the game, it was fine.

So for the ps5 to be 1800p and medium shadows, for whatever reason, it needed to be consistently under 60fps at 4k for more than one level if we go by the "Criteria" the devs have for dropping settings/resolution.

You claimed SSD's were overhyped because we still have load times but DeS proves that wrong. 

And we still do have load times today. Did God of War 2016 have load times back on the old PS4 HDD? I certainly did and they were disguised very well.

You honestly think DeS couldn't be achieved on previous hardware even with no loading screens. Its as linear a game as they come.

You gotta keep in mind that those numbers are the average. I bet the RTX 2070 falls below 60fps with a lot more frequency than the PS5.

If we do see benefits from SSD's beyond reduced load times, they will certainly be on fully current-gen games. I can see some ways where an SSD might speed up some things like texture loads, but I personally don't think we'll see much in the way of SSD secret sauce techniques on PS5, like not rendering assets behind the player to boost graphics in front of the player, by utilizing the SSD and RAM to quickly reload what is off-screen before the player can turn and see that it was missing. While it works in theory, I can't see many devs, especially multiplat devs, taking the extra time to do anything with PS5's SSD that wouldn't also be possible on the Series S/X SSD and slower PC SSD's.

As far as comparisons go, Series X has the edge, although I also wouldn't be surprised if the PS5 version reaches parity with later patches. The field level stress test shows that the PS5 GPU is running with extra head room for 99% (potentially 100%) of the time. At the very least it should receive high quality shadows. Dynamic resolution seems like it would be the best way to go for future releases

In a way I'm kinda sad all the hype has died down around console parity between Series X and PS5. I doubt we will be seeing much complaints about the PS5 version, when in reality I'm sure with a bit more time and optimization we could probably get to 4k60fps.

The fact that we put so much emphasis into these early gen comparisons is really crazy, Gamers Nexus has a serious video about how the PS5 is equivalent to a GTX1060 claiming that its impossible for a $399 machine to perform at the same level as a mid-high end gaming machine of 2020. This was done using DMC as a benchmark.

So basically the difference between series X and PS5 is 1800p vs 2160p. PS5 does run a bit better but I will attribute that due to the lower Shadow quality. Not really bad for a non RDNA 1.5 piece of hardware with variable clock speeds which lacks significant horsepower compared to the full RDNA 2 12TFLOP machine its up against.

Drops below a locked framerate shouldn't be a big deal anymore, variable refresh rate displays are a thing...

I definitely can't tell when I drop from 144hz to 100hz because of it. (Although when that happens I upgrade my PC)

PC has been SSD for years.

Keep in mind the Xbox Series X also has an SSD and can also do all those same things, just the PS5 is better at it.
The Original Xbox was doing that stuff as well... On a mechanical hard drive.

The faster the drive, the higher quality the assets you can swap in, no new wheels are being invented here, it's a refinement of 30~ year old technology.

Honestly, the shadows aren't even a big deal.

But yeah, I don't see why it isn't native 4k. The performance gap between the two machines isn't that great, unless the PS5 is extremely ROP bound in this game.

A mid-high-end PC is definitely faster than the next-gen consoles.
Not that it says allot, supply/demand has been bullshit lately as PC hardware is selling like gangbusters, so no one can buy anything.

I would also argue the Series X isn't a full RDNA2 experience either as it lacks the Infinity Cache... Although the Series X/Playstation 5's level of performance means hey generally don't need it.