Hard-Drive Space Will Actually be a Huge Factor Next-Gen | DLBTV
"What size hard drives do you guys think we will see in the new consoles? I personally believe that this is one of the most important features in these next consoles because digital content will be very, very heavy this time around."
(Next-Gen, PS3, Tech, Xbox 360)
Yeah it does getting a 1tb for my ps3 soon aint going to need to bother with any backup's or anything just going to use playstation plus's online save feature.
My steam folder alone is greater than 1TB (230 games), if they take digital distribution seriously I expect at least a 2TB drive. My storage system is not enough and I have a 120GB SSD for OS and Dev programs, 500GB for documents and 2TB for games. Really hope we will see something comparable but I doubt they would be able to fit it in, maybe we will see an SSD/HDD hybrid in the next consoles.
Even if they don't come that big from Sony, at least we know we can always upgrade like we can with our ps3s if we ever need a big increase in storage space.
I really hope Sony leaves that option availible for ps4. That will be a huge plus in their favor. And us the gamers as well.
multi SKU's are to give people the option to buy a larger sized console without needing to upgrade it themselves (ps3), or giving them pricing options when upgrading yourself isn't a cheap option (360 for a long time).
But hdd wont be a massive issue, because downloadable games wont be huge, i seriously doubt ps4/720 full retail disk games will be downloadable unless they are very, very small.
Most multiplatform games on PC come in at around 6 - 8gb with only a few titles going above 18gb. On a decent fibre optic connection this takes less than an hour. Or around 3 - 4 hours on my 750kb/s. 40gb is very extreme with only MMORPGs using close to it.
As long as they do like Nintendo and let us plug huge external drives the internal drive doesn't have to be that much better than what we got this generation, that will also keep the price down.
I could see 320GB being standard with support up to 2TB, of course it'll be their bullshit overpriced ones. At least the option will be there. I couldn't imagine them spending too much money on that, when they want to focus on hardware performance. I can see games being double the size to what they are now at the most, and the video card coupled with directx 11 - or 12 if it's announced with the new consoles or something - will hopefully make graphics prettier without using more disc/hdd space. I don't really know much about how games are rendered, but I assume the video card will handle tessellation and all that to save space rather then developers manually having to insert larger objects on the disc.
I'm betting on an SSD from Sony. Sony wouldn't be Sony if they hadn't introduced to the mass market a new futuristic storage medium: PS1 - CD PS2 - DVD PS3 - BD PS4 - SSD That would of course make the storage space only 256GB entry level and 512GB premium SKU, but it would make the PS4 seem like another Sony console with tech from the future (like Cell and BD) and that is by itself value added and helps sell the hardware to tech enthusiasts not to mention the lightning fast performance which is important in the comming digital online age
They could start off with 80GB and 128GB and go from there like this gen, if you want more you can replace it yourself. It's advantage in speed (think load times and caching) will make up for the lack of space.
SSDs are expensive at retail because they are currently a very niche product, only bought by high-end PC hobbists, therefore the margins are so high, in order to make money on people that spend $1000s assembling their super powerful PCs, and make up for the investment in a new technology
Sony is in a position to negotiate a contract for 10-20 million SSDs at lower production costs (the effect of scale) and very little (5%) margins for the manufacturer and zero distribution and retail costs
Choise is good. But Making both SSD and HDD models is not smart at all.
The difference could be be pretty devastating running a game designed for utilizing SSD on a system with a HDD..
Anyways I root for SSD, but for the love of gaming those are falling in price and its not like we wont be able to afford a ps4 with and ssd. there should be various capacity sku's and swapping to a larger one down the road could be pretty easy.
Move saves etc up to the cloud and then transfer to the new drive once it is in. Downloading and installing games might take a while but how often would you be doing it anyways?
"The difference could be be pretty devastating running a game designed for utilizing SSD on a system with a HDD.. "
I guess I don't fully agree with you here. I swapped out to a ssd on my laptop and it runs well with every pc game. It's not just install that is faster (in fact that's the least beneficial aspect).
Even when not optimized, I boot up windows now in about 10 sec. Games start up 3-4 times faster and loading times for instances and battlegrounds (like in warcraft).
SSD read times are far superior to hdd. They produce no heat and use far less power.
I do see your point that for the game itself to run faster, devs would have to optimize it. But I mean that shouldn't be too much of a task considering console devs just make their game run on 1 set of hardware specs, unlike pc devs where there are literally thousands of combinations of hardware they have to consider.
The problem is that Hardrives are slower than SSD. Games use the HDD to cache data, load textures, sounds and other assets.
You can compare it to some games this gen that offers a HDD install VS just reading from the disk. Installs some times pretty much eliminates slow textures and pop in. A decent SSD is 5 times faster than a Hard drive.
Skyrim on ps3 have tended to run out of memory and started using the HDD for additional Memory and therefore slows down and an SSD would handle such much better, Also Rage running on a ps3 with and SSD doesnt have the texture streaming issue that it has when installed on a HDD.
Its all depending on how the game is coded ofc, but an SSD can add more than faster load times beetweeen real time sequenses and scenes in games as it pretty much shaves of a lot of weight that the system would pushing if it ran with an HDD.
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Though I'm guessing you meant SKU's, in which case I agree with 1TB being the minimum :)
Need big hard drives, there's no doubt about that.
I really hope Sony leaves that option availible for ps4.
That will be a huge plus in their favor. And us the gamers as well.
But hdd wont be a massive issue, because downloadable games wont be huge, i seriously doubt ps4/720 full retail disk games will be downloadable unless they are very, very small.
40gb+ download? not any time soon.
Both Sony and MS allow external drives to be connected.... Its Sony that allows any non-propietary drive ALSO to be installed internally.
Sony wouldn't be Sony if they hadn't introduced to the mass market a new futuristic storage medium:
PS1 - CD
PS2 - DVD
PS3 - BD
PS4 - SSD
That would of course make the storage space only 256GB entry level and 512GB premium SKU, but it would make the PS4 seem like another Sony console with tech from the future (like Cell and BD) and that is by itself value added and helps sell the hardware to tech enthusiasts not to mention the lightning fast performance which is important in the comming digital online age
I'm not sure what the prices are like anywhere else, but a 250gb drive is around the £150 mark in the uk. 512gb is obviously double that price.
I doubt Sony will want to bump the prices up too much for the sake of an SSD.
Sony is in a position to negotiate a contract for 10-20 million SSDs at lower production costs (the effect of scale) and very little (5%) margins for the manufacturer and zero distribution and retail costs
Or better yet, give us the option to choose. At least until a reasonably sized ssd becomes cheaper in the coming years.
But Making both SSD and HDD models is not smart at all.
The difference could be be pretty devastating running a game designed for utilizing SSD on a system with a HDD..
Anyways I root for SSD, but for the love of gaming those are falling in price and its not like we wont be able to afford a ps4 with and ssd. there should be various capacity sku's and swapping to a larger one down the road could be pretty easy.
Move saves etc up to the cloud and then transfer to the new drive once it is in.
Downloading and installing games might take a while but how often would you be doing it anyways?
I guess I don't fully agree with you here. I swapped out to a ssd on my laptop and it runs well with every pc game. It's not just install that is faster (in fact that's the least beneficial aspect).
Even when not optimized, I boot up windows now in about 10 sec. Games start up 3-4 times faster and loading times for instances and battlegrounds (like in warcraft).
SSD read times are far superior to hdd. They produce no heat and use far less power.
I do see your point that for the game itself to run faster, devs would have to optimize it. But I mean that shouldn't be too much of a task considering console devs just make their game run on 1 set of hardware specs, unlike pc devs where there are literally thousands of combinations of hardware they have to consider.
The problem is that Hardrives are slower than SSD.
Games use the HDD to cache data, load textures, sounds and other assets.
You can compare it to some games this gen that offers a HDD install VS just reading from the disk.
Installs some times pretty much eliminates slow textures and pop in. A decent SSD is 5 times faster than a Hard drive.
Skyrim on ps3 have tended to run out of memory and started using the HDD for additional Memory and therefore slows down and an SSD would handle such much better, Also Rage running on a ps3 with and SSD doesnt have the texture streaming issue that it has when installed on a HDD.
Its all depending on how the game is coded ofc, but an SSD can add more than faster load times beetweeen real time sequenses and scenes in games as it pretty much shaves of a lot of weight that the system would pushing if it ran with an HDD.