Did MS and Sony over estimate their SSD requirements for this gen?

Both Sony and Microsoft went SSD for their new consoles, which was the right move, but did they, and especially Sony, over estimate what would be required this gen?

We have the demo of the Matrix showing the most impressive graphics seen this gen, and the amount of data it requires is like 200mbs, orders of magnitude less than both consoles can deliver. On top of that this generation, and further generation, are going to be pushing upscaling for better fidelity for the buck, all of which requires less data streaming than native resolution of the same image. We also have far better compression this generation.

Then we have SFS and other tech to mitigate memory issues further.

The first lot of show cases of the precieved SSD speeds was Ratchets Rifts and the first PS5 UE5 demo. Ratchet was shown to not be that impressive when Fortnite added rifts and was doing them off hard drives in the PS4 and Xbox One. And again, the UE5 demo on PS5 wasn’t streaming anything near the SSDs out put.

At this point I can not see any game even requiring half of what the PS5s SSD can deliver. The only real advantage for the speed is quicker game loading.

Will we ever see a game require the SSDs speeds both consoles have?

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Sony did, that’s for sure. The PS5 is way unbalanced with way to much tech budget dedicated to the SSD. We needed ssds but not the PS5 ssds

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I don’t know. Ill let you know what I think when developers actually start fully focusing on next gen games (and even then it will be uneducated because I dont know anything about game design/programming/or storage utilization)

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We won’t see any game fully utilize the respective SSD’s until cross-gen ends and even then, I would say it’s probably the second half of the generation where we see full utilization of the SSD’s. I do believe that Sony went overboard with their SSD but at the same time, it’s going to be Sony’s internal studios that most likely take full advantage of it down the line and Microsoft’s internal studios that take full advantage of the SSD and whatnot. Third parties will be pretty even unless it’s a full/timed exclusive.

There is a diminishing return to PlayStation’s SSD solution. A game needs to be tailored exclusively to its high speed which essentially boils down solely to exclusives, and then designed with that speed in mind from the ground up. Otherwise, you get gimmicky implementations like Rift Apart which was already accomplished in principle on last generation hardware.

Even if you did build around that SSD, what will it play like realistically–maybe a Flash superhero game or high-octane spacecraft shooter? The practical implementation is actually incredibly narrow in possibilities. Ignoring that PlayStation hardlined cross-gen support essentially making that speed redundant in most cases for years to come, you’ll generally get faster load times.

Are those load times faster than Xbox’s quick resume? Not really. Xbox had the best implementation in leveraging sampler feedback streaming for better efficiency and then direct storage for quick resume. They worked smarter, not harder, and have the more capable hardware as a result.

tl;dr

PlayStation sacrificed overall performance for nothing. Kind of embarrassing, really.

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There is literally no way to say this 1 year into the console gen and no games being tailored made for the SSD’s or any of the feature sets.

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It’s performing well enough for now.

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I’m pretty confident no games will need to stream ~10 gb/s. We see the numbers for Matrix and the other UE5 demo. You’ll also quickly blow up storage of you have enough diverse assets that you need to stream them in at that speed.

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Cyberpunk was by all accounts a mess on PlayStation but played better on Series X. It was my favorite game last year so I would personally have to strongly disagree that PS5 has performed “well enough”. Just one game, but it still needs to be acknowledged.

We don’t have PS5/XSX versions of Cyberpunk yet, so not a great example. I’m far from a PS fan boy, but let’s not act like it’s struggling.

I’m with @javycane. Too early to tell.

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I mean sure if you want to wait. I played Cyberpunk in December 2020 on my Series X. It was fun, I recommend playing it last year and not waiting.

That wasn’t the point though, Cyberpunk being a broken mess on launch has nothing to do with SSD’s lol.

The conversation just organically led us to a discussion about PS5 choosing lower performance but a better SSD whereas Series X chose better performance for a lower SSD. Pg2g makes a good point that the performance is close, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention that the best game last year performed much better on Xbox.

I don’t know about best game but I guess the least broken platform to play on is an accomplishment ? I guess lol.

Like Jav said, we won’t truly know until mid generation. Personally I think it’s overkill but it’s way too early to make a factual statement.

As a PS5 owner, I wish Sony made the SSD 1tb. I feel they cheaped out on the size, sure it’s fast but size is just as important. I’m going to upgrade both PS5 and Series X consoles with SSD expansion eventually but I think the base PS5 should’ve been at least 1tb.

I’d rather have them overdo it with all components than run into another Jaguar cpu situation.

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Cyberpunk gets so much disrespect. It’s just my opinion sure, but it was the best game last year. I had a lot of fun playing Cyberpunk in December 2020 on my Series X. No amount of internet negativity can change how much fun I had playing that game.

I’m happy for you but I’m just saying it’s irrelevant to the conversation. It’s a last gen game that doesn’t utilize the next gen features in a way where we can make statements of the SSD’s.

So true. Also, YouTuber Brad Sams made a good point today when he said Xbox Series consoles are reliable. Considering the Xbox 360 generation it can be something to celebrate that 1 year in these consoles aren’t breaking and they pass the real world stress test.