Do you guys think the SSD in PS5/Xbox Series X is a gamechanger?

[JasoNsider]

I have a question on this topic if you have the time. Now that the issue of streaming in data in time will be much less of (if at all) an issue, what will be the biggest limiting factor in ncreasing the detail of game worlds? GPU and CPU horsepower, the amount of memory, development realities like time/money?

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I'm hesitant to answer this, as there are a lot of factors (and every dev will have their own take :)), but this is just my take on it. From where we stand, this is the order of importance:
Development pipeline and workflow, Drive/IO speed, CPU, GPU, RAM.

Tools and realities of asset creation is still incredibly important. Now that our drives are about to go mach speed we can finally hit the dream of loading all those assets in a snap. CPU was unfortunately quite slow this generation and was a bottleneck for a lot of operations. GPUs have been doing a ton of heavy lifting for a long time now. I'm basically not worried about GPUs at this point. And finally, with SSDs about to pop off, RAM can potentially be used in a much more efficient way and doesn't need to grow at the same rate.

Short answer is probably tools, engines catching up, and artist workflows improving (for instance, the advent of procedural asset workflow was an enormous boon to getting high quality assets in a much shorter time. We wouldn't have even gotten the detailed worlds we have now without it). Even with all our improvements in hardware, it still takes a long time to develop assets!

 

[jroc74]

Having just a beefier gpu would just be more of the same. From what we are hearing from multiple devs, these particular ssds on the new consoles will have a way bigger impact.

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And in all this, forgot about ram. And early in the gen devs mentioning that was a huge limitation for them when comparing last gen.

Ram, gpu and cpu are still a known thing, for the most part. SSD is just so different. It shouldn't be shocking that ppl are so excited about it.

 

[Lionheart]

If the games don't change, it will still be a game changer for developers. That's worth it enough. I think it will be a game changer for both devs and game worlds.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

Another day, another thread asking if anyone thinks the SSDs in the new consoles are worthwhile/game changing/the second coming. Can we maaaaybe search or something please?

Atleast we are going from "CD/DVD Games" (HDD) back to "cartridge" (SSD) games.
That is the minimum to expect.

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This is not really equitable.

 

[chris 1515]

I don't think game designers are particularly shackled by current processing restraints to have their vision materialized. Flying over cities streaming into memory is cool, but Spider-Man and Gravity Rush were able to accomplish the same thing with clever LoD streaming. The reason you don't see many games like that is more that there's no desire.

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As always it makes it easier for indie developers to make these big games when the engine support is there though.

But I still think it's a game changer. Not for game design, as MCD said we'll still be doing the same boring fetch quests as always. But I considered suspend/resume the real game changer this gen that made playing on last gen systems infuriating and then Nintendo Switch's version even more of a game changer, to the point I find starting the PS4 a drag, so doing away with loading times almost completely will feel like a very different experience too, especially making dying in the average big game way less aggravating.

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It impacts the gameplay on spiderman limiting the speed of travel and it made impossible exterior/interior sequence in Spiderman.



It will solve tons of problems of optimization. Go see the TLOU post mortem too at the end they were fighting against PS3 memory size like crazy.

EDIT: At the end of the UE5, the demo could have teleport the woman in other dimension it was probably possible to let other world visible in the portal.

 

[Alexandros]

I'm hesitant to answer this, as there are a lot of factors (and every dev will have their own take :)), but this is just my take on it. From where we stand, this is the order of importance:
Development pipeline and workflow, Drive/IO speed, CPU, GPU, RAM.

Tools and realities of asset creation is still incredibly important. Now that our drives are about to go mach speed we can finally hit the dream of loading all those assets in a snap. CPU was unfortunately quite slow this generation and was a bottleneck for a lot of operations. GPUs have been doing a ton of heavy lifting for a long time now. I'm basically not worried about GPUs at this point. And finally, with SSDs about to pop off, RAM can potentially be used in a much more efficient way and doesn't need to grow at the same rate.

Short answer is probably tools, engines catching up, and artist workflows improving (for instance, the advent of procedural asset workflow was an enormous boon to getting high quality assets in a much shorter time. We wouldn't have even gotten the detailed worlds we have now without it). Even with all our improvements in hardware, it still takes a long time to develop assets!

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Thank you very much for the response!

 

[rusty chrome]

The PS5 SSD sounds like a dream. It is a game changer.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

I don't think game designers are particularly shackled by current processing restraints to have their vision materialized. Flying over cities streaming into memory is cool, but Spider-Man and Gravity Rush were able to accomplish the same thing with clever LoD streaming. The reason you don't see many games like that is more that there's no desire.

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If you watch the Spider-man GDC talk you would see how much of a problem the HDD was for them .
Spending time doing stuff you don't have to do any more is already a big saving on the devs and that not talking about what else the SSD open up.

 

[Sid]

The PS5 SSD sounds like a dream. It is a game changer.

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Not the Xbox SSD?

 

[gundamkyoukai]

It impacts the gameplay on spiderman limiting the speed of travel and it made impossible exterior/interior sequence in Spiderman.



It will solve tons of problems of optimization. Go see the TLOU post mortem too at the end they were fighting against PS3 memory size like crazy.

EDIT: At the end of the UE5, the demo could have teleport the woman in other dimension it was probably possible to let other world visible in the portal.

Click to shrink...

Yep in the Spider-man GDC talk the HDD speed effect there whole work flow .
They basiclly said the early part with Kingpin took months and they did not bother to do any more stuff like that .

 

[Fafalada]

Now that the issue of streaming in data in time will be much less of (if at all) an issue, what will be the biggest limiting factor in increasing the detail of game worlds?

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The goal-posts will move(back) to storage size as the primary constraint. Ie. if you want unique detail density like envisioned in UE5 tech demo, you're quickly going to be looking at game sizes that will (greatly)exceed the storage space these consoles have available.

Though in fairness - that does mean multiple orders of magnitude increase in detail density over any game to date, so it's a pretty significant jump before limits are hit.

 

[Lukas Taves]

I doubt there's really many AAA games where you can zoom in and "make out individual polygons". Don't know what that's about. If you're talking about the character model fidelity in the UE5 demo I think they could have made more photorealistic if they wanted but it wasn't the character they wanted to showcase. It was the level.

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It's actually the other way around, that are literally no game right now with a geometry density so high you can't see the polygon edges. It's harder to spot in cutscenes because it's a controlled environment, but during gameplay there are plenty of moments where it falls apart.

What I'm talking about is this:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/files/2020/05/Unreal_Engine_5_11.jpg

Zoom in on her shoulder patch and will see it's actually a low poly object and you can see the individual polygon edges. A huge point of that demo was that the size of the vertices are dynamically parsed from the high res models into 1 or near pixel sized vertices, which solves this issue, but as you can see, it's not solved for characters.

Both HB2 and Infinite's demo seems to solve this for the characters, but it's a cutscene. One of the things that I really want on next gen is to never have that immersion broken, for both scenery and characters, so I'm really excited that apparently we are going to get that.

But it was just a cool remark of what to me is a game changer, sorry for dragging this off topic on.

 

[FrostweaveBandage]

It's indeed a game changer for AAA gaming because their entire design philosophy can now change.

 

[zombiejames]

It impacts the gameplay on spiderman limiting the speed of travel and it made impossible exterior/interior sequence in Spiderman.



It will solve tons of problems of optimization. Go see the TLOU post mortem too at the end they were fighting against PS3 memory size like crazy.

EDIT: At the end of the UE5, the demo could have teleport the woman in other dimension it was probably possible to let other world visible in the portal.

Click to shrink...

This is the presentation I always point to when people ask about the benefits of an SSD. The amount of time and effort that went into making Spiderman work on a hard drive is insane, and all of it can be eliminated next-gen.

 

[KillingJoke]

Fast travel sucks in 99% of open world games. Even if this was the only benefit it would still be a game changer. Can't wait!

 

[nDesh]

Tiring and amazed to see people still posting about loading times. And only loading times. It shows the absolute lack of research and actual thread reading done.

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I was going to post this same thing.

 

[ken_matthews]

I voted no until I see a game that utilizes the SSD in a way that couldn't otherwise be done without it. The UE5 Tech demo wasn't it, and I haven't seen anybody talk about a game design concept that would not be possible to achieve with current technology. I think we'll see a lot less loading screens and loading masks in games but nothing revolutionary (unless you consider that revolutionary). It still seems pretty obvious to me that all the talk about the PS5 SSD (not surprisingly nothing about the Xbox SSD) has more to do with Sony's marketing than anything else. Or at least there's no evidence of it being anything more than that at the moment, but I'd love to be proven wrong. I can't wait to see what developers can actually do with the tech.

 

[Broken Hope]

If the PS5 GPU was more powerful I don't think we'd have anywhere as many threads about what a "gamechanger" the SSD was.

It's great we're going to have much shorter loading times next gen. Really great. But I'll take a beefier GPU any day.

Whatever the benefits these new SSD systems will have I expect it's going to be a year or more before we really see any big changes compaed to current games other than loading times.

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I expect benefits on Day 1, first party games have always shown benefits between generations at launch.

Heck being able to sit spend and resume up to 3 games on XSX will be using the SSD.

 

[Broken Hope]

Tiring and amazed to see people still posting about loading times. And only loading times. It shows the absolute lack of research and actual thread reading done.

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People still seem to think they games load an area for you to play and then the drive sits idle until you reach the next area.

Not be constantly loading data off the drive which is what actually happens.

 

[Crayon]

 

[xxracerxx]

If the PS5 GPU was more powerful I don't think we'd have anywhere as many threads about what a "gamechanger" the SSD was.

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Nah, even if the PS5 had a stronger GPU than the SX you would still see articles about the SSD.

 

[jroc74]

Another day, another thread asking if anyone thinks the SSDs in the new consoles are worthwhile/game changing/the second coming. Can we maaaaybe search or something please?

This is not really equitable.

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I've seen this clip posted a few times in the forum,



So my question is, why isnt it equitable? Anyone that watches this, I would also like other opinions on this.

If it is equitable, I was gonna say I think ppl posting 'only loading times, cool' wasnt around for the switch from cartridges to CDs.

 

[Deleted member 8852]

It'll be a nice quality of life thing but I don't think SSD speed is going to lead to innovative game design or anything.

 

[Kimaris]

I can't fathom gaming without loading screens, so if SSDs make that possible then they're unquestionably a game changer.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

I've seen this clip posted a few times in the forum,



So my question is, why isnt it equitable? Anyone that watches this, I would also like other opinions on this.

If it is equitable, I was gonna say I think ppl posting 'only loading times, cool' wasnt around for the switch from cartridges to CDs.

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There were actually games on carts with loading, they were just few and far between because most didn't do things like SFA2 on SNES did. It's much more of a return to things being like cartridges, though,tbf.

I can't fathom gaming without loading screens, so if SSDs make that possible then they're unquestionably a game changer.

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Do you mean modern gaming as a whole or in general because carts rarely had loading screens. So many people keep focusing on just the load times without thinking about the other benefits that, in the long run, matter way, way more.

 

[P40L0]

Currently SSDs are not "changing" the game at all both on PCs and actual consoles (when SSDs are forcefully installed replacing their ancient slow 5400RPM HDDs) as, based on how games, software solutions and hardware architectures were made as of today, the only benefits are in super fast initial load times and almost nothing else.
This is also mainly due to the "non-standardization" of SSDs, as almost no devs are creating anything for "SSD-only" in mind.

With the new hardware architectures starting with both PS5 and XSX + a finally standardized SSD baseline, and considering both new consoles are coupled with new, super smart, physical and software solutions for directly access hundreds of GB of data instantly (therefore actually extending former "RAM-only type of data flow" to the entire SSD capacity) will for sure change how true next-gen games will be made, exponentially increasing the freedom and the possibilities of what can be done and what people can actually "play" with videogames as a media (and an art form) in general.

It is pretty a big deal, and for both (not only for PS5).
A deal so big that will also drive how "next-gen PCs" will be conceived to embrace this change after the new consoles launch.

That said, I would still be cautious with the hype around this for at least the first 2 years from launch, especially because:

• At least for the first 2 years: most third-party games will still be made with HDDs as the minumum target, not really leveraging SSDs and the new architectures/features, resulting in the very few loading advantages as of today on PCs with NVME SSDs setups;
• At least for the first 2 years: even first-party games of both new consoles wouldn't still leverage all the potential above, as both PS4/Pro and X1S/X1X pool of players is just too big to totally ignore, and for loosing all that profit. Also first-parties will be created traditionally with HDD as the baseline, and then upgraded as much as possible. Expect big design changes only later;
• GENERAL REMINDER: remember that SSD and I/O remain a single part of a much bigger picture, also and obviously composed by CPU/GPU compute, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, Dedicated Audio Chips and exclusive software features to maximize all these components together (which are not only the sum of all parts). The most capable and also balanced "picture" as a whole will ALWAYS deliver the better results in the end.

Bright times ahead for everyone in any case, anyway... :)

 

[Pancracio17]

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PS4 HDD loading vs PS5 SSD loading.

 

[Crayon]

PS4 HDD loading vs PS5 SSD loading.

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GAMECHANGER

 

[reKon]

Imagine voting no even with all the information we've been shared and input from developers are directly involved in this for a living, lmao

 

[chris 1515]

Currently SSDs are not "changing" the game at all both on PCs and actual consoles (when SSDs are forcefully installed replacing their ancient slow 5400RPM HDDs) as, based on how games, software solutions and hardware architectures were made as of today, the only benefits are in super fast initial load times and almost nothing else.
This is also mainly due to the "non-standardization" of SSDs, as almost no devs are creating anything for "SSD-only" in mind.

With the new hardware architectures starting with both PS5 and XSX + a finally standardized SSD baseline, and considering both new consoles are coupled with new, super smart, physical and software solutions for directly access hundreds of GB of data instantly (therefore actually extending former "RAM-only type of data flow" to the entire SSD capacity) will for sure change how true next-gen games will be made, exponentially increasing the freedom and the possibilities of what can be done and what people can actually "play" with videogames as a media (and an art form) in general.

It is pretty a big deal, and for both (not only for PS5).
A deal so big that will also drive how "next-gen PCs" will be conceived to embrace this change after the new consoles launch.

That said, I would still be cautious with the hype around this for at least the first 2 years from launch, especially because:

• At least for the first 2 years: most third-party games will still be made with HDDs as the minumum target, not really leveraging SSDs and the new architectures/features, resulting in the very few loading advantages as of today on PCs with NVME SSDs setups;
• At least for the first 2 years: even first-party games of both new consoles wouldn't still leverage all the potential above, as both PS4/Pro and X1S/X1X pool of players is just too big to totally ignore, and for loosing all that profit. Also first-parties will be created traditionally with HDD as the baseline, and then upgraded as much as possible. Expect big design changes only later;
• GENERAL REMINDER: remember that SSD and I/O remain a single part of a much bigger picture, also and obviously composed by CPU/GPU compute, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, Dedicated Audio Chips and exclusive software features to maximize all these components together (which are not only the sum of all parts). The most capable and also balanced "picture" as a whole will ALWAYS deliver the better results in the end.

Bright times ahead for everyone in any case, anyway... :)

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Jim Ryan said no cross-gen games from Sony first-party... All patents for the SSD are from 2015 and 2016. Sony has a SSD prototype since a long time.

Sony's Jim Ryan: “We are going to launch PS5 this holiday and we're going to launch globally"

"A great deal has happened since we last spoke. Terrible things happening in the world, which puts everything that you …

www.gamesindustry.biz

"We have always said that we believe in generations. We believe that when you go to all the trouble of creating a next-gen console, that it should include features and benefits that the previous generation does not include. And that, in our view, people should make games that can make the most of those features.

"We do believe in generations, and whether it's the DualSense controller, whether it's the 3D audio, whether it's the multiple ways that the SSD can be used... we are thinking that it is time to give the PlayStation community something new, something different, that can really only be enjoyed on PS5."

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If this is true, we will have soon the first example of what it is possible to do with the PS5 SSD:

 

[P40L0]

Jim Ryan said no cross-gen games from Sony first-party... All patents for the SSD are from 2015 and 2016. Sony has a SSD prototype since a long time.

Sony's Jim Ryan: “We are going to launch PS5 this holiday and we're going to launch globally"

"A great deal has happened since we last spoke. Terrible things happening in the world, which puts everything that you …

www.gamesindustry.biz

Click to shrink...

We'll see what the actual benefits of the first line-up will be then.

 

[Adum]

If the PS5 GPU was more powerful I don't think we'd have anywhere as many threads about what a "gamechanger" the SSD was.

It's great we're going to have much shorter loading times next gen. Really great. But I'll take a beefier GPU any day.

Whatever the benefits these new SSD systems will have I expect it's going to be a year or more before we really see any big changes compaed to current games other than loading times.

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Kids, this is what true armchair analysts look like. The people who say this kind of stuff are also likely to complain about "the other side" starting flame wars.

 

[DieH@rd]

This is the presentation I always point to when people ask about the benefits of an SSD. The amount of time and effort that went into making Spiderman work on a hard drive is insane, and all of it can be eliminated next-gen.

Click to shrink...

But it is also good that they went through this because they are now very knowledgeable about compression, streaming, and what data is important and what can be streamed with delays.

It will be very interesting to see how much more will they be able to show on screen on PS5. :)

 

[Deleted member 46804]

Definitely a game changer but anyone who thinks loading won't exist is kidding themselves. The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit and this is without all of the AI and complex systems that are normally present in the game. New gameplay mechanics not possible without the SSDs is obviously the most exciting thing.

 

[poklane]

Definitely a game changer but anyone who thinks loading won't exist is kidding themselves. The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit and this is without all of the AI and complex systems that are normally present in the game. New gameplay mechanics not possible without the SSDs is obviously the most exciting thing.

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Epic claimed that wasn't to hide loading but to simply show the detail by forcing the camera extremely close to the wall.

 

[Soriku]

Definitely a game changer but anyone who thinks loading won't exist is kidding themselves. The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit and this is without all of the AI and complex systems that are normally present in the game. New gameplay mechanics not possible without the SSDs is obviously the most exciting thing.

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They already talked about this and that the sliding segment wasn't loading related, it was to show a close up of the model and a few other things.

 

[pg2g]

Definitely a game changer but anyone who thinks loading won't exist is kidding themselves. The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit and this is without all of the AI and complex systems that are normally present in the game. New gameplay mechanics not possible without the SSDs is obviously the most exciting thing.

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At 9 Gigabytes a second, the PS5 can fill its RAM in under 2 seconds. At 5 Gigabytes a second, the XSX can do it in a bit over 3 seconds. That will be the absolute worst case loading.

 

[Deleted member 27315]

How could SSD impact VR?

Especially with foveated rendering.

 

[Vitamin_B_Complex]

Definitely a game changer but anyone who thinks loading won't exist is kidding themselves. The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit and this is without all of the AI and complex systems that are normally present in the game. New gameplay mechanics not possible without the SSDs is obviously the most exciting thing.

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God epic should've knows how uninformed people would see this section. For the last time, it wasn't for loading, it was for showing the assets more closely and also the sound of the bats afterwards. How would that make sense for it to be a loading squeeze when in the next area they have billions of triangles and then a super speed flying scene.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

At 9 Gigabytes a second, the PS5 can fill its RAM in under 2 seconds. At 5 Gigabytes a second, the XSX can do it in a bit over 3 seconds. That will be the absolute worst case loading.

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If it really delivers speeds like this with their compression tech then it completely changes memory management for linear games. Devs don't need to background load the next level or cutscene. Meaning all system memory can be used for the current scene instead of being split with the next one.

This could also be the end of those artificial barriers we see in linear games where you can't backtrack because you fell down a large drop or slide.

Developers have come up with so many clever ways to hide loading that we don't think about. Those techniques have hidden trade offs that wouldn't be needed any more.

Open world games could populate a city with a lot more complicated set pieces because they can call upon assets dynamically in less than 2 seconds rather than having to have those events in memory at all times or blocked by a loading screen.

 

[rntongo]

I haven't seen a single article where developers have even mentioned the GPUs. Devs care about the CPU and SSD (on both consoles). This isn't Sony spin.

You're also reducing it to "shorter loading times," a talking point that has been addressed hundreds of times in every thread on the subject.

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I think it's more to do with the fact that the current gen CPUs were a huge bottleneck and going from HDDs to SSDs is going to be a huge game changer. So it's more a sigh of relief from devs. The GPU improvements on both consoles are unbelievable. I remember in late 2018 it was arguable whether the next gen GPUs would perform close to a vega 64, let alone use RDNA 2.0 and have HW accelerated RT. GPU clocks above 1800MHz?? Now we're looking at processors above the Radeon VII.

The GPU improvements imho are beyond what anyone could have predicted. The SSD and the CPU are the most exciting and needed. Also we need more information about the CPU customizations for gaming workloads. On the other hand, I would like to get to know more about the custom controller in both SSDs and also the other customizations in the APU for gaming workloads. For example the 6 priority levels in the PS5 SSD sounds like something not even high end SSDs have or will have in the near future.

 

[MrBS]

Faster load times will be nice but not a game changer.

No longer having my action hero slowly crawl through a crevice so the next room can load, that will be a game changer.

As for the things I don't know devs will use this tech for we will see!

 

[Betelgeuse]

The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit

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No. This has been debunked 5,000 times.

 

[ken_matthews]

Kids, this is what true armchair analysts look like. The people who say this kind of stuff are also likely to complain about "the other side" starting flame wars.

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It's actually just marketing 101. You play up your strengths and you downplay your weaknesses. If you honestly think Sony wouldn't be constantly talking about the GPU or the CPU if it was stronger, then I am not sure you understand how corporations operate. The only thing they're really talkin about consistently is the SSD because the SSD is Sony's only spec advantage. Of course that's not to say that the SSD will not have a meaningful impact on next-gen games, but right now there are no games that require the PS5 SSD (or Xbox SSD) bandwidth, that would otherwise be impossible without it. Right now it's all marketing, and there's nothing wrong with being incredulous about a company's claims prior to the product even being out.

 

[xxracerxx]

The Unreal demo had loading in the form of the character sliding between a narrow crevice for a bit

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Fucking hell. You have been corrected on this before.

 

[Uzupedro]

It's actually just marketing 101. You play up your strengths and you downplay your weaknesses. If you honestly think Sony wouldn't be constantly talking about the GPU or the CPU if it was stronger, then I am not sure you understand how corporations operate. The only thing they're really talkin about consistently is the SSD because the SSD is Sony's only spec advantage. Of course that's not to say that the SSD will not have a meaningful impact on next-gen games, but right now there are no games that require the PS5 SSD (or Xbox SSD) bandwidth, that would otherwise be impossible without it. Right now it's all marketing, and there's nothing wrong with being incredulous about a company's claims prior to the product even being out.

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Well, of course you're not wrong, but I think it's weird how people say, 'it's just Sony's marketing,' apart from Road to the PS5 and the UE5 reveal (which isn't even Sony's, at least not directly), we barely saw Sony talking about the SSD, like, it's being treated as '' just marketing '' but most of the time we see compliments is by third parties (not in the sense of devs, but people in the industry other than Sony), are opinions of youtubers, tech guys, devs through journalists, etc. And I am not disagreeing that it is the selling point of the console, as you said, it does not nullify its impact if it exists, but Sony itself barely spoke of it, probably when it starts marketing "for real" it will not stop talk about it tho.

 

[i like big butts]

Sony didn't even say that much about the actual SSD beyond that its fast and has a custom controller. They spent significantly more time talking about the I/O pipeline and the dedicated hardware designed to not only make the process faster but take all of the load away from the CPU.

Its a fun fact but lot of super fast networking and storage options these days can be bottlenecked by the CPU and software. Its funny that Linus out of all people was shitting on the PS5 when he's encountered the same type of bottlenecks with his business networking. It doesn't surprise me that he's made that apology because he was seriously talking out of his ass since the raw SSD speed isn't even really the most important aspect of the PS5's I/O. The SSD is a bit of a red herring to be honest, its that combined with all the custom hardware that makes the PS5 more than just an off the shelf PC like a lot of PCMR people like to say the PS5/Xbox X are.

 

[Adum]

It's actually just marketing 101. You play up your strengths and you downplay your weaknesses. If you honestly think Sony wouldn't be constantly talking about the GPU or the CPU if it was stronger, then I am not sure you understand how corporations operate. The only thing they're really talkin about consistently is the SSD because the SSD is Sony's only spec advantage. Of course that's not to say that the SSD will not have a meaningful impact on next-gen games, but right now there are no games that require the PS5 SSD (or Xbox SSD) bandwidth, that would otherwise be impossible without it. Right now it's all marketing, and there's nothing wrong with being incredulous about a company's claims prior to the product even being out.

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The guy I was replying to still thinks the SSD is there just for better loading times, which has been refuted by the console designers themselves and every single industry veteran who's actually made a public statement about the SSD. At this point, this "wait until we see the games" comment that part of the gaming community has adopted can only be called ignorance. Every single person directly involved with the gaming industry has been touting the advantages of having SSDs and how greatly they'll change the landscape of gaming. This isn't just PR speak from a PS5 ad. This isn't the next version of blastprocessing. From people involved with console hardware, games developers, engine developers, and people who directly work in the industry all claim the same thing - that having these high speed SSDs as the base for building games on will be the next big change. At this point, anyone who says that it's just marketing speak is being disambiguous.

I find it a bit annoying that people still refer to Mark Cerny's presentation as a marketing stunt. Dry/Boring/Technical sure. PR stunt? Nope. It was just a presentation aimed at developers explaining what the PS5 is capable of. The presentation focused on a lot of things, and not just the SSD. Sony has not been constantly talking about their SSD. A lot of developers not at all related to the company love it though.

 

[Zedelima]

I dont understand much of these things, but i've saw plenty of devs praising the SSD, so i thing it will be a gamechanger

 

[AzerPhire]

I'm on the fence. I know it will bring huge improvement in load times and streaming in data but the actual gameplay design changes I am having a hard time seeing and not a single person has provided a new idea other than jumping through portals into other worlds. I guess we will be getting lots of Dr. Strange games next gen?

Speeding up or adding in flying sections while cool is not exactly game changing. When I see things like the flying section of the U5 demo I just can't see that passing any actual play testing. People just don't have the reaction time to play a section like that the way it was presented.

Hopefully the next month shows me something new.