By now, it’s safe to say that today’s PlayStation 5 presentation wasn’t exactly a hit with fans, being more of a straightforward discussion of the console’s technical specs instead of officially revealing the console itself or any of the next-gen features the average gamer is most interested in. Despite largely falling short of expectations, though, the “Road to PS5” made it clearer than ever that all of that next-gen tech will be going into making the console much more convenient to play games on.
Much has been said in the past year regarding the fact that the PS5 will boast a custom SSD for storing and retrieving data in place of the traditional disc-based hard drive, increasing the speed at which the PS5 will be able to process and load games considerably. Going even further into this popular detail, PS5 system architect Mark Cerny broke down the numbers during the presentation, stating the 825GB SSD will be able to process data at speeds ranging from 5.5-9GB per second, making the PS5 roughly 100 times faster than the PS4.
As for how that translates to something consumers will see the benefit of, Cerny stressed that the goal with the PS5 is to effectively make things, from loading games to installing them onto the console, happen pretty much instantly. “The potential is that the game boots in a second. There are no load screens,” he said. “The game just fades down while loading a half dozen gigabytes and fades back up again. Same for a reload, you're immediately back in the action after you die, and fast travel becomes so fast it's blink and you miss it.”
Putting aside the game-changing benefit of virtually-nonexistent load times in the games themselves, this will also alleviate a big source of frustration for many gamers: installing games and their updates. These days, there are plenty of massive current-gen games that require well over 100GB of memory space to install on consoles, and in many cases, these may receive updates that are as hefty, data-wise, as many games. On the PS4, this can mean a single installation or update can take hours to fully load, all while largely keeping players locked out of their games for that amount of time.
Waiting for things to load has become a key factor in not only how games are experienced, but how they are designed as well, and for years this has put limits on what players and developers can do as a result. So if the PS5 succeeds in working as quickly as Cerny claims, the switch to lightning-fast data-management and the effective removal of the waiting game could very well mark one of the biggest changes to how games are played and made in a long time.
The PlayStation 5 is currently slated to launch this holiday season