Support NeoGAF

[CJY]

Every generation of PlayStation console except for the PS4 brought into many people's lives exotic tech, such as the Reality Synthesizer, and Emotion Engine, Cell architecture. The PS4 went down the road of PC architecture and ended up being just basically a PC, along with Xbox, who went in a similar direction.

It made sense for the PS4, because there was such uncertainty around the console market with heavy competition from mobile gaming, which everyone for a brief moment thought may consume the entire gaming market.

The PS5 might be different if the rumours are true, and the PS5 is going to have an exotic SSD system that could almost be an order of magnitude faster than the one in the new Xbox.

There is so much chatter about the SSD in the PS5 being game-changing. Whatever it is Mark Cerny is cooking up, I'm sure it'll be exotic and much of their marketing will be focused on this fact. I think many people on the other side of the fence will tell you it doesn't make that much of a difference, that you can get mostly of the same games across all the platforms, but Sony's first-party exclusives will show off the tech the best. I'm not personally convinced that bandwidth of 5-8X faster than the Xbox Series X will result in games that will blow us away. The possibilities I'm reading/hearing about are tantalising, (getting rid of loading would be cool), but I would prefer to see in a game how much better it would be; Gaming experiences that can only be made possible from this increase in speed. It really comes down to the devs and the resulting games - the same as it has always been - but the PS5 probably needs to have that one thing that gives a reason for people to buy it over an Xbox, beyond the initial spate of games, and I think the SSD is that thing. Whether it will make much difference in the long-run is totally up for debate.

I haven't looked into what speed the SSD in the XboxSeX is supposed to be (dunno if those specs are out yet), or whether it's PCIe3 or 4. I also don't know if there is a possibility of MS increasing the number of lanes to make it faster. This is possibly a spec that has already been locked in. The SSD is supposssedly a NVMe-type device though. I imagine MS is using standard parts, but possibly soldered into the motherboard. My bottom-line belief is that MS's SSD system is standards-based and will fall within the same performance characteristics of storage we can obtain pretty easily in the PC-world today. Something in the region of 3-7GB/s. If Sony has something that can do 20-25GB/s throughput, I think we may have a gamechanger.

I may be totally off with all of my figures, but I think in the areas of CPU and GPU, there's going to be be a pretty level playing field, so RAM/Storage is where the main point of differentiation will be found.

Also, if the PS5 is basically just another PC, it's boring. That's what XboxSeX is, it's a closed, proprietary PC. That is a great thing for MS, as they are basically the kings of PC anyway. If you could install Windows on it, and Linux, it would be amazing for $500, but I highly doubt they are going to allow that.

I have very high hopes that Cerny and SIE can deliver something mind blowing. I don't know how much of a hand Cerny had in the production of Jak & Daxter and the engine they used that would stream data from the DVD, so you could have a seamless worlds without loading times. The original Ratchet & Clank also had similar tech and it was the first time I had experienced seamless 3D worlds such as those and it was really amazing at the time. I do wonder if the PS5 can give us those types of leaps in experiences again. Now that Cerny is architecting his second home console, with a far bigger warchest, I'm just really excited about what the unveiling of PS5 will bring.

Anyway, this went on far too long. Just some food for thought. Happy Holidays everyone!

Edit:
DF just released a video on the topic.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Also, if the PS5 is basically just another PC, it's boring. That's what XboxSeX is, it's a closed, proprietary PC. That is a great thing for MS, as they are basically the kings of PC anyway. If you could install Windows on it, and Linux, it would be amazing for $500, but I highly doubt they are going to allow that.

It's ok if MS does it but not Sony? Wut. It literally doesn't matter. Games do and even if I don't like Sony's heavy western based direction and their games they are still making console exclusive titles people buy. MS sorta threw in the towel this gen and made everything available on the PC. So agree to disagree.

Anyway, this went on far too long. Just some food for thought. Happy Holidays everyone!

Merry Christmas

 

[I_D]

If Sony has something that can do 20-25GB/s throughput, I think we may have a gamechanger.

Not only would that be a game-changer, it would completely revolutionize storage as we know it; given the price of consoles.

The fastest of the fastest m.2 and NVME speeds is 32 GB/s, and even top-notch components typically go for 16GB/s. There's absolutely no way a console is hitting that rate, unless they're losing all sorts of money per console.


I agree that SSD is going to be a big deal for consoles; but it's not going to be THAT big of a deal.

 

[PhilipDoesMatter]

And less memory therefore.

I can see myself buying two extra units of those.

 

[TheContact]

Seeing as intels optane SSDs can do 2,500MB/s read and 2,000 write, there’s no way the ps5 is going to have anything surpassing that. The best the ps5 will get is nvme ssds given they need to be around 1TB. Keep in mind a one TB nvme ssd goes for $100 on the market and the entire ps5 needs to cost no more than $400

 

[DiscoJer]

The problem with them using SSDs is that games are huge and SSDs are small.

I bought a gaming PC with a 500 gig SSD a few months ago. It's fast as heck, but it's full, basically. I had to buy a 2 gig hard drive to put my lower priority games on.

 

[VFXVeteran]

Every generation of PlayStation console except for the PS4 brought into many people's lives exotic tech, such as the Reality Synthesizer, and Emotion Engine, Cell architecture. The PS4 went down the road of PC architecture and ended up being just basically a PC, along with Xbox, who went in a similar direction.

It made sense for the PS4, because there was such uncertainty around the console market with heavy competition from mobile gaming, which everyone for a brief moment thought may consume the entire gaming market.

The PS5 might be different if the rumours are true, and the PS5 is going to have an exotic SSD system that could almost be an order of magnitude faster than the one in the new Xbox.

There is so much chatter about the SSD in the PS5 being game-changing. Whatever it is Mark Cerny is cooking up, I'm sure it'll be exotic and much of their marketing will be focused on this fact. I think many people on the other side of the fence will tell you it doesn't make that much of a difference, that you can get mostly of the same games across all the platforms, but Sony's first-party exclusives will show off the tech the best. I'm not personally convinced that bandwidth of 5-8X faster than the Xbox Series X will result in games that will blow us away. The possibilities I'm reading/hearing about are tantalising, (getting rid of loading would be cool), but I would prefer to see in a game how much better it would be; Gaming experiences that can only be made possible from this increase in speed. It really comes down to the devs and the resulting games - the same as it has always been - but the PS5 probably needs to have that one thing that gives a reason for people to buy it over an Xbox, beyond the initial spate of games, and I think the SSD is that thing. Whether it will make much difference in the long-run is totally up for debate.

I haven't looked into what speed the SSD in the XboxSeX is supposed to be (dunno if those specs are out yet), or whether it's PCIe3 or 4. I also don't know if there is a possibility of MS increasing the number of lanes to make it faster. This is possibly a spec that has already been locked in. The SSD is supposssedly a NVMe-type device though. I imagine MS is using standard parts, but possibly soldered into the motherboard. My bottom-line belief is that MS's SSD system is standards-based and will fall within the same performance characteristics of storage we can obtain pretty easily in the PC-world today. Something in the region of 3-7GB/s. If Sony has something that can do 20-25GB/s throughput, I think we may have a gamechanger.

I may be totally off with all of my figures, but I think in the areas of CPU and GPU, there's going to be be a pretty level playing field, so RAM/Storage is where the main point of differentiation will be found.

Also, if the PS5 is basically just another PC, it's boring. That's what XboxSeX is, it's a closed, proprietary PC. That is a great thing for MS, as they are basically the kings of PC anyway. If you could install Windows on it, and Linux, it would be amazing for $500, but I highly doubt they are going to allow that.

I have very high hopes that Cerny and SIE can deliver something mind blowing. I don't know how much of a hand Cerny had in the production of Jak & Daxter and the engine they used that would stream data from the DVD, so you could have a seamless worlds without loading times. The original Ratchet & Clank also had similar tech and it was the first time I had experienced seamless 3D worlds such as those and it was really amazing at the time. I do wonder if the PS5 can give us those types of leaps in experiences again. Now that Cerny is architecting his second home console, with a far bigger warchest, I'm just really excited about what the unveiling of PS5 will bring.

Anyway, this went on far too long. Just some food for thought. Happy Holidays everyone!

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here.

Yes, the NvMe SSD will be really fast. It may even provide for some really optimized level streaming to add more content in. But that will hit a limit because even if you loaded the entire level in RAM, you have to process all that data. So, there will be a bottleneck somewhere. And I'm betting the GPU will be the bottleneck. So while it appears to be a great addition to the hardware, I don't really think it's going to bring out something as dramatic like ray-tracing will.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

The problem with them using SSDs is that games are huge and SSDs are small.

I bought a gaming PC with a 500 gig SSD a few months ago. It's fast as heck, but it's full, basically. I had to buy a 2 gig hard drive to put my lower priority games on.

SSD prices aren't that bad these days.

 

[megreotsugua]

The SSD is supposssedly a NVMe-type device though. I imagine MS is using standard parts, but possibly soldered into the motherboard. My bottom-line belief is that MS's SSD system is standards-based and will fall within the same performance characteristics of storage we can obtain pretty easily in the PC-world today.

Intel could potentially make the fastest SSD for PC using 3DXpoint PCM. Too bad it is exclusive to Intel CPUs though. Google Stadia is using AMD GPU but Intel CPU because of it.

 

[BadBurger]

The problem with them using SSDs is that games are huge and SSDs are small.

I bought a gaming PC with a 500 gig SSD a few months ago. It's fast as heck, but it's full, basically. I had to buy a 2 gig hard drive to put my lower priority games on.

If you can afford it investing in a second 1 TB SSD just for apps and games is the way to go, and leave just the OS and your user profiles on the first drive. They're down to $100 USD now on Amazon. Hell if I had the ports on my array controller I'd buy a second one just to build a mirror for even more speed.

 

[Spukc]

It's ok if MS does it but not Sony? Wut. It literally doesn't matter. Games do and even if I don't like Sony's heavy western based direction and their games they are still making console exclusive titles people buy. MS sorta threw in the towel this gen and made everything available on the PC. So agree to disagree.

Merry Christmas

UwU

 

[njean777]

I really want to know what they are going to do about game sizes. 1TB is not enough now for 4k assets and the such. I hope I can still plug in a external massive drive and play games off of that. I like Ssd's but their storage capacity is a little lacking compared to traditional HDD's as of right now.

I think the best thing we can hope for right now is that the consoles will proliferate Ssd's and that will bring the cost down tremendously.

 

[badblue]

Also, if the PS5 is basically just another PC, it's boring. That's what XboxSeX is, it's a closed, proprietary PC.

That's what all modern consoles are. There is no getting around that.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

UwU

Merry Warmas.

 

[TeamGhobad]

no it wll be RAM and i feel MS will be on the loosing side again.

 

[CrisPy2019]

Seeing as intels optane SSDs can do 2,500MB/s read and 2,000 write, there’s no way the ps5 is going to have anything surpassing that. The best the ps5 will get is nvme ssds given they need to be around 1TB. Keep in mind a one TB nvme ssd goes for $100 on the market and the entire ps5 needs to cost no more than $400

Don't forget that YOU pay 100 for that.
I'd pay 80 or something probably because that's just how I am (deals everywhere)

Sony does mass orders in the thousands. That gives a hefty quantity discount. Then there is no retailer that wants 20% of the price etc. And they basically don't pay the VAT like we do.

Sony probably pays 30-40 at Max for a 100 dollar SSD.


But I agree that we expect to much.

Won't make a huge impact on sales anyway because as you can't market better gameplay in still images only THEM GRAPHuX counted. And now we have the same problem they can't market better loading times in pictures. Nobody remembers Nintendo's ultralow loading times on everything up to GC today. Only visuals count in dumbistan. Sometimes even fake CG trailers convince the masses because the noobs can't tell them apart from real-time graphics...

 

[MilkyJoe]

They'll have the same fecking SSD

 

[eastwood333]

no it wll be RAM and i feel MS will be on the loosing side again.

By how much? Klee says there will only be a 10% power advantage at most for PS5 and he claims to have both consoles spec sheets. People on here particularly take his words as gospel. Personally, i think XSX will turn out more powerful. Phil has made it known XSX is being built to be as powerful as they can possibly make it. This is not 2013 Xbox One era with it being designed around entertainment,kinect etc...

Phil has gone on record saying he is confident XSX will be the most powerful next gen console. DF has implied they think the same and have many good connections in the industry. RedTechGaming said he's heard devs saying both are more powerful than the other.

It will be fun times ahead.

 

[TeamGhobad]

By how much? Klee says there will only be a 10% power advantage at most for PS5

10% more powerful on the gpu side. we don't know about the other parts. i have a feeling both RAM and SSD will be faster.

 

[eastwood333]

They'll have the same fecking SSD

More than likely.

 

[eastwood333]

10% more powerful on the gpu side. we don't know about the other parts. i have a feeling both RAM and SSD will be faster.

I have a feeling there is zero bases other than wishful thinking. In the end, wishful thinking,presumptions,bragging over unsubstantiated rumors,leaks from so called insiders may back fire, leaving many to eat crow and be disappointed.

I am really surprised people actually think PS5 will have a better GPU,RAM,and SSD than XSX. There isno evidence of this. Hell,why stop there. Lets just say PS5 is a 15 tf monster with a better gpu,cpu,ram,ssd,better hardware accelerated raytracing, in a box the size of a chicken nugget,at $399. Why? Because of 2013 Xbox One and Cerny we trust. Pack it up MS.

 

[TeamGhobad]

I have a feeling there is zero bases other than wishful thinking...

its what all the leakers have said since day 1

 

[Elektro Demon]

It's not that big of a deal. You're gonna have faster texture streaming and faster load times. Is it game changing? No imo.

 

[MilkyJoe]

By how much? Klee says there will only be a 10% power advantage at most for PS5 and he claims to have both consoles spec sheets. People on here particularly take his words as gospel. Personally, i think XSX will turn out more powerful. Phil has made it known XSX is being built to be as powerful as they can possibly make it. This is not 2013 Xbox One era with it being designed around entertainment,kinect etc...

Phil has gone on record saying he is confident XSX will be the most powerful next gen console. DF has implied they think the same and have many good connections in the industry. RedTechGaming said he's heard devs saying both are more powerful than the other.

It will be fun times ahead.

I will be amazed if Xbox is not the most powerful after all their talk.

PS will rest on their laurels confident that they have enough fans locked in

 

[eastwood333]

its what all the leakers have said since day 1

False. Thats gpu side only. Not Ram. And nobody knows what kind of SSD or what tech MS have as their SSD solution. DF is far more credible than a few so called insiders. DF have their own sources. Or what about Kumachi showing XSX appears to be more powerful?

 

[Agnostic2020]

I have a feeling there is zero bases other than wishful thinking. In the end, wishful thinking,presumptions,bragging over unsubstantiated rumors,leaks from so called insiders may back fire, leaving many to eat crow and be disappointed.

I am really surprised people actually think PS5 will have a better GPU,RAM,and SSD than XSX. There isno evidence of this. Hell,why stop there. Lets just say PS5 is a 15 tf monster with a better gpu,cpu,ram,ssd,better hardware accelerated raytracing, in a box the size of a chicken nugget,at $399. Why? Because of 2013 Xbox One and Cerny we trust. Pack it up MS.

Honestly based on the rumors it seems to me Sony (not PS) wants to recreate the ps4 success again. Frankly it will be much harder this time but that PSN revenue makes it much easier than before (PSN revenue is higher than entire revenue of Xbox and Nintendo combined for 2018) .

I wouldn’t be shocked if ps5 is stronger and undercuts the xsx by 50$. For Sony PS division is extremely important . They won’t be like ps3 era and take 350$ loss per console but 100$ to 150 is kinda reasonable and unfortunately Xbox will not be able to match that as MS does not allow it.its not their philosophy. Look at price of xbx1x , surface line etc... all of those are in the higher end of price bracket in their segments. Big hardware loss is not their philosophy as a service provider company that they have transitioned into

 

[TeamGhobad]

False. Thats gpu side only. Not Ram. And nobody knows what kind of SSD or what tech MS have have as the SSD solution. DF is far more credible than a few so called insiders. DF have their own sources. Or what about Kumachi showing XSX appears to be more powerful?

i first heard of binned RAM over a year ago. this was before kumachi.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Microsoft's round of studio acquisitions tells me they have a better grasp of what is the primary battleground than the OP does.

 

[Agnostic2020]

I will be amazed if Xbox is not the most powerful after all their talk.

PS will rest on their laurels confident that they have enough fans locked in

Have you not noticed how aggressive PS has been ? They have restructured the whole division made some major changes since Jim Ryan took over . They definitely are not resting or being reactive . They r being proactive

 

[Mithos]

SSD prices aren't that bad these days.

Not bad compared to what?

I can either buy a 1tb m.2/ssd or a 4tb mechanical (same price/give or take a few dollars/euros). I'd say they are still quite expensive.

 

[eastwood333]

Have you not noticed how aggressive PS has been ? They have restructured the whole division made some major changes since Jim Ryan took over . They definitely are not resting or being reactive . They r being proactive

Have u seen how aggressive MS is? XB1X,heavy investment in 1st party studios (7 in past two years?),Phil stating they want to lead in power/performance for next gen like they do with the XB1X? Phil stating XSX is being built to be the most powerful console they can possibly build as a premium product?

I have not heard any of this coming from sony. A change in leadership can mean anything.

 

[Shmunter]

I will be amazed if Xbox is not the most powerful after all their talk.

PS will rest on their laurels confident that they have enough fans locked in

Let’s hope Sony remembers that PS4 success was in part due to it being the higher end system over the competition.

Either way, can’t see either being significantly different.

 

[MilkyJoe]

Have you not noticed how aggressive PS has been ? They have restructured the whole division made some major changes since Jim Ryan took over . They definitely are not resting or being reactive . They r being proactive

I'm just going by every single instance of any successful company/product, in any industry, even Playstation, in the whole world, ever.

Let’s hope Sony remembers that PS4 success was in part due to it being the higher end system over the competition.

Either way, can’t see either being significantly different.

aye, i'm wagering a 2tf difference in MS favour, just because they need it the most. In reality it'll mean fuck all between them at those numbers

 

[Agnostic2020]

Have u seen how aggressive MS is? XB1X,heavy investment in 1st party studios (7 in past two years?),Phil stating they want to lead in power/performance for next gen like they do with the XB1X? Phil stating XSX is being built to be the most powerful console they can possibly build as a premium product?

I have not heard any of this coming from sony. A change in leadership can mean anything.

you will hear the most powerful comment from sony around the 2020 November .not now. just like with PS4 they never mentioned they are more powerful till the release date. infact MS had a preporder link for X1 which said preorder the "most powerful console,the X1" . and we know how that turned out.

talk is cheap in my book .

 

[eastwood333]

Honestly based on the rumors it seems to me Sony (not PS) wants to recreate the ps4 success again. Frankly it will be much harder this time but that PSN revenue makes it much easier than before (PSN revenue is higher than entire revenue of Xbox and Nintendo combined for 2018) .

I wouldn’t be shocked if ps5 is stronger and undercuts the xsx by 50$. For Sony PS division is extremely important . They won’t be like ps3 era and take 350$ loss per console but 100$ to 150 is kinda reasonable and unfortunately Xbox will not be able to match that as MS does not allow it.its not their philosophy. Look at price of xbx1x , surface line etc... all of those are in the higher end of price bracket in their segments. Big hardware loss is not their philosophy as a service provider company that they have transitioned into

I don't agree with anything you just posted. Sounds like one-sided fanboy wishful thinking jibberish nonsense with zero credibility. No offense.

 

[eastwood333]

you will hear the most powerful comment from sony around the 2020 November .not now. just like with PS4 they never mentioned they are more powerful till the release date. infact MS had a preporder link for X1 which said preorder the "most powerful console,the X1" i can get you the pic if you want. and we know how that turned out.

talk is cheap in my book .

Are you the next insider to rise or just speaking more baseless fanboy/wishful thinking jibberish nonsense again?

 

[Vasto]

 

[Agnostic2020]

Are you the next insider to rise or just speaking more baseless fanyboy/wishful thing jibberish nonsense again?

if you dont like what you r hearing doesnt make it jibberish non sense . can you refute my point about MS marketing for X1 vs sony for PS4? No.for the rest just book the post and time will tell

 

[Dolodolo]

Are you the next insider to rise or just speaking more baseless fanboy/wishful thinking jibberish nonsense again?

It's always fun to hear speeches about fanboys from you and Timdog
You're both probably the most vulnerable green camp fans in the world)
And there's no way you can prove that Klee is a fake insider
If you could, you would have done it already. And so, it's just empty words)

 

[Fuz]

They're less important than most of you guys think.

I barely notice any difference between my SDD and my HDD.

Oh wait, I actually notice two big difference: price and space.

 

[FStubbs]

Not only would that be a game-changer, it would completely revolutionize storage as we know it; given the price of consoles.

The fastest of the fastest m.2 and NVME speeds is 32 GB/s, and even top-notch components typically go for 16GB/s. There's absolutely no way a console is hitting that rate, unless they're losing all sorts of money per console.


I agree that SSD is going to be a big deal for consoles; but it's not going to be THAT big of a deal.

That or Sony has some new SSD tech. It's been awhile since they have pushed media. They are on the short list of companies who actually could produce some space age storage tech.

 

[Birdo]

Average Joe doesn't give a hoot about SSDs, Teraflops, or RayTracing.

What do they care about? The price.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Nah. A game loading in 4 seconds on one platform and 2.5 seconds on another is meaningless.

The CPU, GPU and RAM are the guts of the system, not the storage device.

 

[megreotsugua]

WHAT'S THE BOTTLENECK WITH REGARDS TO LOAD TIMES?

One poster laid it out very nicely.

1. The bottleneck is the CPU.
2. A big part of that CPU bottleneck is decompression. Even a fast 8 core CPU will only be capable of handling full SATA speeds from an SSD. We're overdue for hardware-accelerated decompression cores (or consumer fpgas) to help with this issue, imo. Someone out there should be talking about this. :/
3. The next problem is simply software: there's a lot of games that will only use a single thread during loading, for instance.
4. Optane offers a slight performance increase over NVMe, this is thanks to a lower latency between requesting data and getting it back.
5. Combining the above two: async IO is rare outside server software typically, and this means that games will spend time CPU bound before the CPU thread just stops, submits a request for more data, and sleeps waiting for the response. I'm not even sure if it's the game dev's fault or if there are API problems presented by NVMe that OSes haven't really addressed. But it's possible to fix this issue in software by pipelining async IO requests. This should remove most of the difference between Optane and NVMe for loading times, and make both of them faster than they are now.
6. Finally, software. Making loading times fast requires game devs to care about making loading times fast. There's tons of dumb stuff that happens at load time that could have been pre-computed or cached, and just isn't. So that's just "do less work." I suspect part of this is that hard drives used to be so slow that CPU time during loading was basically free, and that's still who they have in mind (e.g. consoles still have HDDs...)

So on the one hand, game devs could do a lot. On the other hand, I think there's a type of hardware acceleration we're presently missing.

On the bright side, I think we're entering an era where we'll start to see a lot more specialized bits of hardware. This is happening in phones most prominently right now, but I think we'll start to see it filter back to normal CPUs before too long. Perhaps we'll actually get those decompression cores someday?

 

[Nickolaidas]

I think that the fact that loading screens will soon become a thing of the past (giving us the good ol' arcade insta-play feel all consoles had up to the 16-bit era) is huge. Again, consoles are going to feel like arcade machines and I can't freakin' wait.

 

[Ulysses 31]

I think that the fact that loading screens will soon become a thing of the past (giving us the good ol' arcade insta-play feel all consoles had up to the 16-bit era) is huge. Again, consoles are going to feel like arcade machines and I can't freakin' wait.

M.2 still has loading screens on PC, they're not going anywhere, specially when assets become more detailed and bigger in size.

And with all the connected stuff these days, SSD won't fix those "waiting" screens.

 

[01011001]

Nah. A game loading in 4 seconds on one platform and 2.5 seconds on another is meaningless.

The CPU, GPU and RAM are the guts of the system, not the storage device.

yeah, the difference won't be big enough to make an impact... you can't brag about a 1 or 2 second loading time advantage in an promotional material... and people like Digital Foundry will also not really focus on differences this small.

M.2 still has loading screens on PC, they're not going anywhere, specially when assets become more detailed and bigger in size.

you can't compare PC to Console. on PC the dev teams don't develop for SSD, they develop games to run on as many drives and hardware as possible. If you make a game for a system that has a specific SSD you can optimize your game for that.
an example for loading time optimization that wouldn't be possible on PC is Mario 3D World. that game is optimized to have zero loading times after the initial load, because it is designed to fit almost entirely into the RAM of the Wii U.

why can you not do that on PC? because you can't know how big the RAM of the system is the customer will play your game on. of course you could make the minimum requirements high enough so that the game will fit into the RAM, but even then, with Windows and other programs running on a PC, you can't know if there won't be something interfering with the game, so you need a certain amount of leeway.

so it is possible on PC to do this, but it is risky.
and with SSDs it's very similar, on a closed system you know exactly how fast that SSD is, and the margin of error you have to account for is way smaller than on an open system like a PC

 

[Techies]

M.2 still has loading screens on PC, they're not going anywhere, specially when assets become more detailed and bigger in size.

And with all the connected stuff these days, SSD won't fix those "waiting" screens.

I had to move DMC5 to my mechanical drive, just so that I could read the loading screen tips...

 

[Ulysses 31]

you can't compare PC to Console. on PC the dev teams don't develop for SSD, they develop games to run on as many drives and hardware as possible. If you make a game for a system that has a specific SSD you can optimize your game for that.
an example for loading time optimization that wouldn't be possible on PC is Mario 3D World. that game is optimized to have zero loading times after the initial load, because it is designed to fit almost entirely into the RAM of the Wii U.

Where are you getting this from? Games aren't designed for a specific HD, they're designed to run in specific operating systems and it's the OS that handles the I/O requests of the game, the game is agnostic of the storage type.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Been using SSD for years what's all the fuss about?