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[Warnen]

Going from load times that I could go take a piss during to almost instant is the kind of qol update that was worth the new gen. Everything else is gravy.

 

[BennyBlanco]

What? Developers already dropped PS360 in late 2014, the only cross-gen game you got from then on was MGSV.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

It'd be helpful if we had more games to evaluate, but I never expected SSD's to have a huge impact on graphics. Loading times is what is so awesome. And yes, quick resume is awesome.

 

[Amiga]

New gen games are dependent on the SSD. It's why Cyberpunk is abandoning the old generation.

 

[RoadHazard]

No, because we haven't seen any games truly built to take advantage of what it can do yet. Everything is cross-gen, and by definition those games can't do much more with it than just make load times faster. A game made to fully tap into that data streaming potential couldn't run on an HDD console, and that's why we haven't seen it yet. That doesn't mean the SSD "magic" isn't real, just that nobody is using it yet.

The only game that even slightly shows off the potential is R&C, but even that is only scratching the surface. There are no other real examples at all yet, but they will come.

 

[In Cold Blood]

The power of the SSD was always bullshit. It was done by one group of people to try and even the spec sheets up after the console reveals.
The SSDs bring a host of excellent features and improvements to this generation.
Loading times. I think alot of us with new consoles have already forgotten just how fucking horrible the old PS4 and Xbox One loading times were. Go back and try to game on on of those consoles after being used to quick resume and you will want to stab yourself in the eye with a pen.
It helps to offset the need for additional RAM, which is why we only got a doubling of RAM this gen rather than the big increases over last generations.
It is a great improvement.

However, the PS5 SSD won't give you any advantage over loading times to the Xbox Series consoles.
We heard that only the PS5 SSD speed could do Ratchet and Clank. That horseshit was settled when people put slower SSDs in their PS5 and it ran R&C just fine.
Then it was that only the PS5 could do those rift changes in R&C. Then fortnite came out with the same shit on traditional hard drives and the fanboys became quite on that one.
Unfortunately those stupid fanboys trying to save their fucking console in the spec wars really muddied the waters about what SSDs can and will do.
That's why threads like this come up. Instead of having conversations about what these consoles can do with their SSDs we are having discussions about bullshit that should never have been said

 

[Romulus]

Those were supposed to be the revolution in the use of memory, basically allowing developers to imagine worlds and systems so complex we couldn't really understand.

Nobody was saying this shit

 

[teezzy]

SSDs are awesome

This thread is retarded. You deserve long load times

 

[bender]

You get spoiled by the load times quickly. Most of Sony's titles are incredibly snappy. GT:Sport is GT7 is a great example.

Innovation is rarer these days as games are fucking expensive which makes publishers and developers risk adverse. It really doesn't matter what the configuration of the new hardware looks like, that isn't going to drive innovation and more often than not that hardware is mainly going to be used to push better looking visuals. While that boring, that's just where the industry is at.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Try running the matrix demo from an HDD and tell me how it goes... Games were already being developed for previous consoles, this gen literally hasn't started, we just have the hardware for running the game but not the game

Here's my confusion with all this: if these consoles are so powerful then why aren't we seeing cross gen games and "next gen upgrades" with even huge boosts to the graphical settings? I've bought or played almost every AAA game that has a native Ps5/Series X version and aside from 60 fps the settings are still not close to matching PC settings of those games.

For example: Control Ultimate and Cyberpunk 2077 next gen upgrades. Both these games had extra ample time to get their long anticipated next gen upgrades and they are minor improvements at 60 fps and the RT modes are so disappointing, both 30 fps with input lag, lower settings than when they came out running on an RtX 2080.

The same applies to every other game. Then you can look at Last of Us 1 Remake: here we have Naughty Dog making it only for ps5 and it's barely better than Last of Us 2. If these consoles were indeed powerful machines, they'd be able to brute force these games up to Ultra settings at 1440p/60 ...consoles being closed systems have the added benefit of optimization being easier with better shared tools among first party games. With the exception of Ratchet there's nothing great graphically being done on Sony or MS side.

Even Forza Horizon 5 which was treated as a showcase game from one of MS' best teams, doesn't impress at 60 fps. Only at 30 fpe can we get close to PC's Ultra and even that falls we'll below. The texture quality difference and tesselation is not that good at 60 fps.

If the SSD was such a big deal we'd see at least SOME devs find a way to utilize it in these native ps5 games. It's understandable that not all devs would put in the work to alter their engine on a patch or cross gen game but surely someone out there would have by now, right?

I think the big screw up from Sony and MS was not having more memory bandwith. That would've allowed us to get true PC-like performance outa these machines. It sucks to have to deal with low anisotropic filtering still. Obviously, better RT and machine learning would've been amazing. Imagine if Sony/MS went "all out" and took a bigger loss

 

[Lognor]

As others have said quick resume is the real game changer with ssd. Not much else to add. Ssd has not added a thing to gameplay though so it certainly was overhyped in that regard.

 

[Hobbygaming]

Yes.
We don’t have many examples yet but for what we have seen you are wrong.

Examples like:
Lumen in the land of Nanite - 8K texture streaming
Matrix Awakens - Streaming highly detailed textures
Ratchet and Clank - Providing a lot of content on screen

Yep, Ratchet and Clank actually uses the PS5 SSD to push its visuals too

 

[teezzy]

Playing games on my Series X vs my one s is a night and day difference

 

[Shizumapower]

Spiderman boots in like 3seconds...

 

[Shizumapower]

PS5 trash like door stop XB Series glorified toothpick

 

[bender]

I think he's referring to the shape of the consoles. I'll use my dumbass to English translator when I get home to doublecheck.

 

[Neofire]

You must not own neither the Xbox series X or Playstation 5 be saying this lol. The load times are night and day vs last gen consoles. What a silly thread to make.

 

[.Pennywise]

When PC used to say we've been using SSDs since 10 years ago and that wouldn't be the big deal all the fans would jump on our throats. And even now, they'll make the excuse that no game is true next-gen still.

 

[Neo_game]

SSD is the biggest upgrade in these console sadly. Loading times everyone can notice it is easily coming from HDD. If you mean game design is going to change due to SSD. Who knows? I think Star Citizen did show a big difference. It should definitely help in streaming and memory management though. Unfortunately devs seems to be happy with their PS4 game engine and are releasing cross gen games scaling it to these console with 60fps mode and 2x resolution upgrade.

 

[sachos]

Yes i think you are wrong OP, the problem is we are in a cross-gen period, there are practically no next gen only games yet that were exclusively designed with those SSD speeds in mind.

I think the PS5 has done pretty well so far in fulfilling the two major next gen promises, RT and almost no loading: It has demostrated sub 2 seconds load times in their first party open world games and Ratchet has shown what an SSD focused design can do plus the RT Insomniac has shown in their games is one of the best so far in terms of console games.

And i don't think one can be "sceptical" about hardware power, you can read and compare the specs of these machines compared to base last gen consoles, those are technical factual numbers you can measure.

 

[El Pistolero]

This generation has barely started, thanks to Covid. Wait until 2024, at least, to see what both machines can do, when cross-gen development is no longer the norm.

 

[Chronicle]

I can transfer games that are over 60 gbs between my ssds in my ps5 in like just under a minute. Some under 30 seconds. It's insanely fast!

 

[Lasha]

SSD are a great improvement. PC players used them for years to a great reduction in loading times. The marketing fluff about SSD being the difference put out by the console makers was bullshit to generate hype. Rift Apart is 30 or so GB installed. The PS5 has 16 GB of system memory. Does the game really need to cycle between half the game every few seconds? It definitely needed a SSD but I would bet the average PC could do it with a cheaper SSD.

 

[Corndog]

New gen games are dependent on the SSD. It's why Cyberpunk is abandoning the old generation.

What about pc then?

 

[Corndog]

Yep, Ratchet and Clank actually uses the PS5 SSD to push its visuals too

A hard drive cannot provide rasterization. It can’t improve visuals. It can load textures faster, that’s it. As long as you have enough ram you can achieve the same result.

 

[Kagey K]

You must not own neither the Xbox series X or Playstation 5 be saying this lol. The load times are night and day vs last gen consoles. What a silly thread to make.

I think he bought into all the "game changing" hype being thrown around pre launch and expected more than reality delivered.

 

[oldergamer]

So, before this gen launched, I, among others, was sceptical that new gen was much more powerful than the previous one, but all everyone told me about was the new shinny tech we were getting: SSDs!

Those were supposed to be the revolution in the use of memory, basically allowing developers to imagine worlds and systems so complex we couldn't really understand. I thought it was just fast loads, but my take was mentioned as ignorant, at best.

Cue 2 years laters and... Yeah, I'm still waiting on this tech doing anything substantial. In fact, this entire new gen has been pushing so little boundaries that almost every game is cross gen. I have my series s as game pass machine and it's great, but I sure as hell don't buy on the power of these new consoles, and specially on those special SSD.

All games made so far can run on last gen still, with some simple downgrades, it seems.

Am I wrong? There was any game making use of this technology that i didn't got to see how big is the difference? Is the new gen disappointing for you?

Yes we can.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Games that actually utilise it, do load almost instantly and when games are finally built around all the new technology, its gonna make a big difference.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Couldn’t disagree more. The change in load times has been game changing

 

[vpance]

Not BS. But we have to wait for UE5 games to showcase the real benefits.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Many called BS before they came out. SSDs are no doubt great and much better than HDDs but the way Sony marketed them it was as if they would significantly improve performance beyond just loading times. It was quite embarrassing that SSD was the big hype feature for PS5.

I'm happy HDD's are disappearing from gaming machines and games being developed around SSD really benefit from them. As a PC gamer who has had an SSD for about 15 years I guess I didn't fall for it like many console users did.

It's good that consoles have finally got with the times. It should have happened in 2013 to be honest but of course the prices prevented that. Consoles need to be cheap and you couldn't just stick a good size SSD in a PS4 or XB1 back in 2013.

All we were ever gonna get was fast loading times and maybe some changes to the way games are made. I mean that's good but again I feel a lot of people expected more.

It's been nearly 2 years and while the new consoles were impressive at the time they are becoming dated already. If you want to see great performance then it'll be on PC thanks to DDR5 and PCIE 5 being used together with tech like DirectStorage and RTX IO.

 

[Hoddi]

Load times alone make the SSDs worth having. But I'm not expecting the great improvements in graphics quality that some people do. 16GB was always a pitiful increase over the last gen and we're just seeing the effects of that.

Then again, 99% of the games still annoy me with those stupid splash screens anyway.

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

It's cool but not revolutionary, designers sadly design for the lowest common denominator.

 

[THE DUCK]

Thats because no one is making next gen games. All the games you've played on your series s are last gen games.

Agreed, it's xbox one and ps4 and pc low end specs that are the lowest denominator.

I agree with OP, they are really talking about how ssd was supposed to usher in some sort of massive improvement in performance besides loading times, and it hasn't happened.

 

[Trunx81]

I understand what Op is meaning: SSD should be more than just a qol update for fast load times. Jumping in between worlds like that Ratchet game was a first great start. Imagine a Dr Strange Multiverse game where you can seamlessly change from one dimension to the other. That would be amazing!

And: I don’t think the pandemic is the most crucial part for cross gen, but the chip shortage that started BEFORE the pandemic (the older of us remember that time). Sony and MS not being able to deliver enough consoles, a good user base on old gen and the fact that games are now easily scalable helps a lot.

 

[bitbydeath]

None of that requires an ssd. Just adequate ram.

That amount of adequate ram doesn’t exist in today’s technology. Even PC had to downgrade the Lumen demo to be able to run it.

 

[Ezquimacore]

I said it was bs before and I say it know after installing a bunch of games on my steam deck's MICRO SD CARD

 

[ArtHands]

Its a drastic improvement in the eyes of console-only players, who has been using HDD up until 2020

But for those who hype it to heaven, claiming it will change gaming forever or fundamentally change the entire gameplay design or level, ignore them.

 

[kyliethicc]

lol no

 

[Aenima]

I cant go back to HDD consoles. Just the fast loadings alone are a game changer to me. Other stuff player dont notice cuz are the devs that take advantage of it, like using less duplicated data keping the games around the same size as the last gen ones and in some cases even smaller.

 

[Naked Lunch]

This thread is killing me.
You still have people in here saying "the fast load times are game changing!!!! Its a revoluton!!!"

Its really not that big of a deal - I seriously dont even notice. Could care less.

 

[Hobbygaming]

A hard drive cannot provide rasterization. It can’t improve visuals. It can load textures faster, that’s it. As long as you have enough ram you can achieve the same result.

The SSD is used in Ratchet and Clank to transfer data quickly to what you're seeing in front of you

 

[StreetsofBeige]

For consoles, since they never had SSDs I guess so. For loading times yes. For everything else no.

 

[Aenima]

This thread is killing me.
You still have people in here saying "the fast load times are game changing!!!! Its a revoluton!!!"

Its really not that big of a deal - I seriously dont even notice. Could care less.

When you had games on PS4 like Bloodborne loading for 40 seconds just to respawn you, and now you have Demon's Souls that respawns you in 3-5 seconds, its a game changer.
Freaking Witcher 3 had fast travel that took more than 1 minute to load on PS4. A fast travel in spider man its like 2 seconds on PS5.

 

[akimbo009]

Meh.

SSDs have been around for years, so not really. And it's not that much of a trick since we know what fast access to games felt like with carts, etc. It's definitely better than the regression that was CD/spinning disc.

But as far as really demonstrating anything exceptional or novel? Not really. Was such a weird hype factor when it's really a convenience factor (but yes, let's never go back please).

 

[BusierDonkey]

SSDs were a massive improvement on PCs when they first appeared and have become a bare minimum in new builds because waiting for shit to load is annoying. In terms of load times alone they're worth it. Going back to my Xbone after running my PC can be brutal as I usually don't have time to read tooltips on PC by then when I fire up the old VCR I swear it feels like minutes of load time in the same games.

Once they become better utilized with things like direct storage in new upcoming games they'll become even more useful.

 

[Beechos]

What happened to all the ssd speed load time benchmarks we got when these systems launched?

 

[Corndog]

That amount of adequate ram doesn’t exist in today’s technology. Even PC had to downgrade the Lumen demo to be able to run it.

Bull crap. Prove it. Show me where the engineers that built the engine said that.

 

[dcx4610]

HDD to SSD is a massive difference. I'd almost go as far as to say it's one of the biggest game changers in computing in the last 20 years. That said, it's funny how quickly you get used to it being normal so you forget how big of a leap in tech it was.

Go back to something like GTA5 loading on a HDD and then wonder how you ever lived that way.

 

[CobraAB]

Time to go back to mechanical hard drives I guess.

SSD had a nice but short run.