SSD Will Be the Real Game Changer for PS5/Next Xbox, Opening Up Lots of Design Possibilities

As we approach the Fall season, it’s worth reminding that Microsoft and Sony will both release their next-generation consoles in a little over a year from now.

Clearly, all the major game developers have already received their development kits, even if they aren’t final yet. As a result, going forward we’ll try to glean as much information as possible from developers during our regular interviews.

For example, we recently caught up with Crytek as the studio known for the CryEngine is about to release Hunt: Showdown, the supernatural PvPvE monster hunting game where players have to face both creatures controlled by the AI and hunters controlled by other gamers.

Hunt: Showdown is set to debut on August 27th for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and we’ve got a big interview coming up soon. During our chat, we asked Crytek what was their opinion of the early next-gen console specs shared by Microsoft and Sony.

Sony and Microsoft have confirmed their next PlayStation and Xbox consoles to be
coming in Fall 2020. We already know some of the specifications, such as AMD’s Zen 2/Navi architectures, hardware accelerated ray tracing, support for up to 8K resolution and 120fps, as well as a custom designed SSD that should massively improve loading times. What do you think about these early specs? Can we expect ‘revolutionary’ games thanks to these new consoles or just ‘evolutionary’ titles?

If visual quality will most likely continue to increase in the same large steps as is
expected with any new generation of consoles, the real game changer will certainly be the
new fast storage that has been promised. Apart from the obvious advantage of crushing
loading times, it will open up quite a lot of possibilities for games to be designed for it
with regards to streaming. That’s also a front on which game engines will need to evolve
quite drastically, but it’s definitely exciting.

Crytek also seems eager for the possibilities enabled by these ‘ultra-high-speed SSDs’, after Sony said this piece of hardware will be of critical importance for their overall vision of the new PlayStation console.

Of course, as often is the case with new generations of hardware, it may well take a while before developers are able to truly exploit its capabilities to design new games. We’ll likely see a lot of cross-generation titles in the first year or two. Still, it’s something well worth being excited for.