Solid State Storage on Next-Gen Consoles: A Good Idea?
One of the most important features of next-gen consoles is the transition from mechanical drives to solid-state. This provides many benefits, not only perceivable by the end user (customers/gamers), but developers as well who can change the way they make games: instant loading, higher polygon count, higher textures, etc.). This decision was not an easy one because solid state drives are way more expensive than mechanical drives.
To give you an idea, a 3.5’ 1TB mechanical hard drive, which is the one you can find on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X costs about 50 dollars, while its solid-state equivalent can cost $130 to $150; that is up to 3 times its price. The main benefit of solid-state drives is that read speeds can be 10 times faster and write speeds almost 20 times.
Evolving User Habits
Solid State Drives (SSD) were made with PC users in mind. People nowadays transfer a lot of content either from the cloud or between devices. With faster read/write speeds this chore does not become cumbersome. SSDs have always been perceived as a luxury by average users, and the price does not really justify the benefits for their habits. A niche market however (content creators, gamers) received SSDs as manna from heaven.
NVMe: Another Step Forward
NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. This new kind of storage solution uses a PCIe interface instead of the regular SATA (Mechanical and Solid-state drives). They can be ten times faster than an SSD but are even more expensive. A 1TB NVMe can range from $150 to $230 or more.
This type of storage is starting to be more common among PC users who want faster booting times and overall performance boost out of their systems. Currently the PS5 has a PCIe slot that can house an expandable drive (NVMe) but is software locked. A future update will allow users to expand the “1 TB” SSD storage the system comes with. Sony will inform which drives are officially supported.
Xbox's Alternative
Xbox Series X has a proprietary solution to the expandable storage. They have worked with Seagate to develop a 1TB expansion card that will be easily connected and removed from the back. They are reminiscent of old-school memory cards (PS1, GameCube), but instead of just holding game save data, they will store anything the system needs (games, save files, media).
Eyebrows were raised when a subreddit source claimed that this storage expansion will be priced at $219.99. Apparently, this rumor has been confirmed, and there will be versions that go beyond 1TB.
Hybrid Drives: A Good Alternative
Hybrid Drives use the regular SATA interface to operate. They are certainly faster than mechanical drives, but their performance is nowhere near SSDs or NVMe drives. A 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive can cost around $70. SSHDs are better suited for huge amounts of storage rather than constantly rewriting data on a regular basis.
PS4 and Xbox One X (last gen) owners have been transitioning from their stock mechanical drive to a 2 or 3TB SSHD to deal with storage issues on their systems. Consoles will install data either you buy the game digitally or insert a disk, so an ever-growing game library will eventually become an issue. The ease of access that massive storage gives is a very convenient solution when swapping between games, especially if you bought it digitally.
Are slower loading times worth it if you have massive storage in your system? I believe it is a sound compromise. That way you will not be having to constantly uninstall or install games due to lack of space.
Games like Modern Warfare/Warzone constantly release huge updates that are bigger than 20 or 30 GB and sometimes your system can mistakenly prompt a message that you do not have enough space to install the update even if you have. So, you recur to uninstalling a game, download the update, and reinstall the game again.
1TB Should Not Be a Standard Anymore
With the rise of the “battle royal” genre, games have started to become more of a service rather than a fixed experience. Developers constantly create content for their games and are regularly releasing updates. As mentioned above Modern Warfare/Warzone is known for its huge updates, and ever-growing size, presenting gamers with storage issues and download times.
Games have also transitioned to higher textures, more polygon count, and a more cinematic experience. This translates to heftier game sizes. For example, a game like Dark Souls 3 (2016) has a 25 GB size, while Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) has a significant 90GB one. The “standardization” of 4K TVs as the way to play games has had a big impact on this trend.
Suddenly we find ourselves with the issue that 1TB is not enough for a video game console to store a decent, large library. We started curating the list of games we currently have installed in our systems. This matter is even more present in next-gen consoles due to their design. These systems were made with faster loading times in mind, so hybrid drives are out of the question.
Storage expansion was encouraged but not necessary on last gen consoles (PS4, Xbox One), however, on current gen (PS5, Xbox Series) it seems to be imminent and almost mandatory. They even have the specific ports waiting to be enabled when the time comes. The issue is that expanding your console storage will cost you more than half of what these systems’ price is currently at.
What do you think about the state of storage on current gen consoles? Is the industry biting more than they can chew? Should loading times not have been a pivotal point in this generation?
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