When Sony revealed details about their PlayStation 5 console back in March, the details surrounding the SSD inside the console were perhaps the most interesting. Due to design specifics that go over my head (to be fair, it was a very developer-centric talk; it was originally meant for GDC) they settled on 825GB as the final size for the drive inside every launch PS5 – we recently found out specifically when the PlayStation 5 will launch and for how much. Microsoft went straight for the standard 1TB size with its Xbox Series X (which launches at a very similar price and time), with the expectation that the install sizes of games were getting bigger and bigger.
We have already seen games reach over 100GBs in size this last generation. Red Dead Redemption 2, to name an example, required around 150GB to unpack and install on a PS4. Right now on my PlayStation 4, with all of the updates and bonus content, currently sits at 113GB. The Last of Us Part II also recently required a similar chunk of space. Now, we may have found out initial details about the sizes of games on the next generation, and they don’t seem to be getting much smaller.
According to the official PlayStation website, Spider-Man: Miles Morales will start at around 50GB, while more than doubling with its Ultimate Edition version, which includes a remastered version of 2019’s Spider-Man. Demon’s Souls clocks in at around 66GB.
The PS5 SSD will allow players to install certain parts of games first, so the raw numbers will likely be the worst-case scenario. Also, despite the sizes of the games compared to the overall space on the SSD, Sony argues that this is merely a moot point. The speeds of the SSD, Sony claims, largely outweigh the inconvenience of frequently uninstalling and reinstalling games to save space, as most players have a low number of games they actively play and have installed at once. The speed, it has to be said, is an impressive feat. The PS5, while a technically less powerful console compared to the Xbox Series X, has a much faster SSD, with speeds up to 8-9GB/s compared to the Series X’s 4.8GB/s.
What do you make of this news? Anyone shocked about how big games are getting nowadays? Is the size of the PS5’s SSD a concern? Let us know.