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2 years in, can we call BS on the "power of SSD" in new consoles?

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
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?
 

GermanZepp

Member
I understand it was a selling point. But considering we got all crossgen ass games we might wait a little bit more to see if a game truly take advantage of the ssd. We are going to find out nevertheless, it's a matter of time
 
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?

You're not only wrong. You are EXTREMELY wrong.

After playing Demon's Souls on PS5 I physically will never go back to old gen. The game virtually has no loading when you jump from 1 location to another.

Returnal is fast when you die and for a roguelike game you die a lot.

Assassins Creed no longer takes 10 million years to load in.

Quick resume on Xbox Series X is incredible.

I don't know what you been doing or playing. There is a massive difference in loading thanks to SSD. And like others have said, we have yet to really kick this gen off. Just be a bit more patient lol.

Are you aware that during the PS4 gen we still got cross gen games for over 2 years as well? Why do people always QQ about cross gen lol. It's been like that every generation, it takes time before old gen is left 4 dead.
 
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Isa

Gold Member
I get what you're saying, and second what the others here have said. I still think this new gen is going to be the next PS3/60 type generation in terms of length, especially if economies end up going super south. Frankly I'm not upset though, I want to see all the talent the world over try to really get the most out of these machines. I've been happy though with Japanese and other Asian devs bringing the heat in a big way. My backlog is out of control and keeps getting clapped by constant releases!

spank looney tunes GIF
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I popped a disc version of Ghost of Tsushima director's cut into my PS5 the other day. Not only did it take about 25 minutes to "install" the data from the disk (I could blame the disk drive on that) but the accompanying update took about 10 minutes to install - and that was after it was fully downloaded. With the endless "copying..." screens I had to sit though, it felt like the "power of the SSD" slogan was a bit shit.

But fast travel in that game is un-fuckin-real, so there's that.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
I mean you got some GAFer making a thread today about how 'amazing the next consoles are going to be'. Sounds exactly like the hype over the SSD SSD SSD from a few years back.
Load times are not the equivalent to something like seeing Mario 64 for the first time.
Im not impressed with this gen at all.

I do appreciate the push for 60fps gameplay at least - and old stuff runs like butter.
 
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FeldMonster

Member
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?
You proved yourself wrong in your own post, LOL. You said yourself that most games are on last gen consoles, so of course they aren't fully pushing the new hardware to its maximum.

You also point out "2 years later". I wonder if there was any kind of worldwide event that has lasted 2 years that might have slowed game development....
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
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?
It's not really disappointing for me as I never bought the unrealistic hype so many people were going on about. I did believe the faster loading and I do like that, but that's really the only substantial improvement I can see from the SSDs in this gen's hardware.
 

Gravemind

Member
Nah, there have already been big gains in things like loading times, download speed, quick resume etc. Maybe the "power" hasnt materialized in the ways that some people on here seemed to advocate for before the launch of these systems, but there has definetly been a noticeable improvement over HDD.
 

Kagey K

Banned
The SSDs are doing exactly what they are in there to do.

The only people disappointed are the ones making hypotheticals and buying into the idea that game design and actual games were going to fundamentally change due to them

For the rest of us they provided the QOL changes we expected.
 
Are SSDs in consoles a good thing? Obviously yes. Are they ever going to be doing all that crazy shit people said they were gonna do? I highly doubt it.

In fact, I'm pretty sure there will never be a game on PS5 that actually requires an SSD that fast. Every single first party console exclusive Sony will release this generation will run just fine on slower drives, and PC ports will prove it.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
No, I don't think we can call BS on it. It has significantly reduced load times and that's been awesome. I think SSD in consoles has been a game changer. If we're going to call BS on anything it's the marketing that plays it up as magic.
 

The Stig

Member
I popped a disc version of Ghost of Tsushima director's cut into my PS5 the other day. Not only did it take about 25 minutes to "install" the data from the disk (I could blame the disk drive on that) but the accompanying update took about 10 minutes to install - and that was after it was fully downloaded. With the endless "copying..." screens I had to sit though, it felt like the "power of the SSD" slogan was a bit shit.

But fast travel in that game is un-fuckin-real, so there's that.
I noticed exactly that. Super fast travel
 

Corndog

Banned
There's not even such a thing as new gen yet. We have like 3-5 games that really feels nexgen, sadly. I gotta say SSD made a difference for me while playing Returnal. It was great to keep the pace.
It’s nice for loading times. Probably helps save on ram usage.
 
While I agree with your general point I think that we just haven't seen many games developed specifically for the hardware. Most games have been crossgen, the APIs were not available until close to launch (look at how long Directstorage took to come out for PC), and then even more critical in my mind is that devs are making their games with PC in mind and at this point there are still too many PCs with spinning drives.

The other thing is that some people over hyped what fast storage can do. I remember people taking about how it could be used like RAM, and that is just not very likely. The thing both console makers have talked about is being able to load large, complex, detailed textures into FOV very quickly. I think over the next three years, as crossgen dies, and more PC games require SSDs, we will finally see some games taking advantage of that ability.

On the other hand, I haven't booted my PS4 Pro in 9 months because I absolutely cannot handle the slow loading. I got the hankering to go play HZD and I couldn't handle load times. I even remember HZD not being too bad for loading times, but by God the instant loads and fast resume on Series X have made me impatient as hell :messenger_beaming:
 
Uh, as far as i can remember, there was only one camp claiming to have a special, groundbreaking SSD. We know who it is, there is no need to name it. Most of us who already had SSD's in our PC's knew what it meant and that was faster load times, faster boot times and faster data streaming and it's pretty much doing exactly that.

Everything is snappier, on Xbox you can hold multiple games in what is basically a save state and jump between them exactly where you left off (minus the MP/online side of games for fairly obvious reasons) even after fully powering your console off and unplugging it from the wall. Not even a PC can do that. In my opinion, the SSD's were the single biggest upgrades to the consoles as without them it would've felt like just an upgraded Xbox One / PS4. The upgraded CPU is obviously a big change for consoles too but the SSD makes it. The graphics while better than before, aren't much of a difference. The only solid thing that came out of the CPU/GPU upgrade is a better hold on 4K res and pretty much constant 60fps capability although that still boils down to if developers are competent enough to target that spec.

It seems silly that the SSD is the major improvement but even as a PC player, i still run on an old 4690K 3.5GHz CPU and when i went from an old HDD to an SSD, it brought new life to my computer. I went from a boot time of around 3-5 minutes on Windows 10 to easily 5-10 seconds before i was on the desktop. Not only that but everything was faster regardless of the aging CPU/GPU i have.

I think it would be wrong to say it was BS. Now that the SSD is the standard, they can focus on faster RAM/CPU/GPU. I honestly don't need games to load in the blink of an eye, a couple seconds isn't going to ruin my day. Do you know how long it took to load GTA5 on my old X1? Literally around 5 minutes of solid waiting down to at least 40-50 seconds total from initial boot and thats on the extreme end. Most other games you can be booted and playing within seconds and the way Xbox is doing it, if it's already loaded it literally is instant.

Even if it cost an extra 100-150, i'd pay the extra for a beefy cpu/gpu upgrade that could show a noticeable difference to a competitor / old gen.
 
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Corndog

Banned
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
None of that requires an ssd. Just adequate ram.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
SSD is the single greatest improvement over 8th gen. PC players had enjoyed it for years already, and now us console folk enjoy muuuuch better load times. Its a MASSIVE quality of life improvement, comparable to wireless controllers.
 

badblue

Member
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.
SSD's have been part of the PC gaming land scape for a while now. I'm not sure what you were expecting SSD to deliver except faster loading times. Everything else is up to dev teams to utilize and I'd bet the man-hours to do those things are not worth the money/time investment for the most part.

" imagine worlds and systems so complex we couldn't really understand. " is a statement reminiscent of the n64/playstation console wars. I can see that big edgy lettering overlaying an image like this:

iu


as a two page spread add in the likes of EGM or PC Gamer magazine.
 
Quick Resume is to die for, and IMO is by far the best new feature of all consoles this gen, but is it a function of the SSD?
I dont know the answer to your question - but just wanted to add youre absolutely spot on - it is an insanely cool feature.
(Next part not directly responding to you)
I also like the triggers when playing racing/driving games on the Dual Sense(And I pray MS is gonna go ahead and do something similar cause Forza would feel so great)

Microsoft and Sony both brought some cool stuff to the table this time around. I can see where Op is coming from, but I also agree with others saying we just have to wait and see what the people working on these machines do.

Its a good time to be a creator and a consumer. New technology, transition period, big names will fade -small names will explode, and hopefully we get some great experiences along the way.

Im happy with both of my purchases.
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
Nah they're just being under utilized. Not a single dev is taking advantage of new hardware. Until the industry stops making cross gen games we wont have a clue what these things can do.

I think Factions 2 from Naughty Dog and Spiderman 2 from Insomniac will be the first true next gen games of the generation. (both companies have gotten feet wet with PS5 games, and neither are cross gen) Should be the equivalent of like Uncharted 4 or something last gen
 
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skit_data

Member
I don’t think we have seen what will be made possible to do in terms of game design yet, but the experience of having fast storage has already made a pretty big impression already.
Games like Demon’s Souls, GT7, Elden Ring and Returnal are way more enjoyable now that loading times are non-existent.
Looking forward to the future next gen exclusives specifically designed for fast storage though, that’s where we’ll see bigger changes.
 
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