It might sound hard to believe, but Sony has said the PS5 is 100 times faster than PS4 because of the console’s custom SSD hard drive.
When asked about the PlayStation 5’s speed compared to its current-gen console at a corporate strategy meeting, Sony made the bullish claim that PS5 will “revolutionize the game experience for users” in an official Sony document.
Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida added that the PS5’s custom-built SSD (which is faster than the SSD in the Xbox Series X) will enable processing speeds that dwarf those found on PlayStation 4.
“In order to further enhance the sense of immersion in games, we expect to improve not just the resolution, but the speed of games,” the Sony document reads.
“For example, through a custom-designed high-speed SSD, we plan to realize game data processing speeds that are approximately 100 times faster than PS4. Game load times should be much shorter, and players should be able to move through immense game worlds in almost an instant.”
It’s important to note the word “should” is used a couple of times, but there’s no denying that the PS5’s solid state drive is blazing fast, and considerably more capable than the PS4’s aging mechanical hard drive.
Speeding ticket
Sony has been championing its SSD technology for a while now, and first showed off what its next-generation hardware was capable of in a Spider-Man PS4 comparison demo which showed off how the entire world could be streamed instantly, and without slowing down. The SSD should also eliminate load times, which have become an issue as game worlds have continued to increase.
It seems that the PS5’s SSD is going down well with developers, too, as Epic Games recently expressed its appreciation for the new storage system, and showed off a short demo of what players can expect to see from Sony’s next-gen system.
If you were to be cynical, it’s easy to see why Sony is pushing its SSD tech so hard. On paper, the PS5 comes out with only one win when stacked up against the Xbox Series X, and that’s the hard drive speeds. Everywhere else, though, from the power to the GPU and the CPU clock speed, Xbox Series X takes the win.
