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KeplerL2: PS6 Likely to Use 1TB SSD with No Disc Drive; Game Size Could Be Reduced with Neural Texture Compression

I wasn't expecting 2TB like the Pro. 1TB is what i expected. Same for the fact it won't have a disc drive out of the box.
There probably will be some SKU with disc drive attached out of the box as it's easier for mass market
But as drive is separated, it can be done on packaging stage, making it easy for Sony to maneur with what's included in the box
 
You honestly legit cannot say whatever Cerny was trying to do didn't happen. You just can't know that. And theer is absolutely nothing wrong with having more throughput.


The Zen6 architecture is PCIe Gen 5 for consumer and gen 6 for enterprise. What you are suggesting is that Sony, for whatever reason, goes and tells them not to use the gen 5 architecture... which makes no sense because nothing stops you from pairing those PCIe lanes to a controller for whatever Gen SSD you want. Esepcially when you consider that those lanes arent even just for the SSD, those lanes also feed teh USB ports.

They can have Gen 5 interface and still support Gen 4 drives (and not require Gen 5 speeds for gaming), like on PC.
 
They can have Gen 5 interface and still support Gen 4 drives (and not require Gen 5 speeds for gaming), like on PC.
Yes they can. Just saying that it would make no sense to have AMD retool the Zen 5 architecture to replace the PCIe lanes with something like version 2 as the other guy was suggesting.
 
Call of Duty comin in to take up 1/4 of people's PS6 hard drive

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Even if that's true, I can't see NTC becoming a standard by launch. It's such a fundamental change to how textures are optimized and stored. It will be a few years before it gets full adoption. Even intermediate stuff like NTBC (Neural Texture Block Compression), where you store NTC textures on disk but convert to BC textures in RAM is still in research phase with no way to go mainstream until next gen hardware is in dev's hands, because the decompression currently has too much overhead without cooperative vectors, which makes it cost prohibitive for practical use. Perhaps they can start building it assuming it all works out, using Nvidia hardware to hit the ground running, but I don't know how many devs would operate on the bleeding edge like that.

The first few years will be painful, especially for pro users who would see a downgrade in capacity. But given the ballooning costs, may be that's what we should prepare for...

Why would you even convert to BTC in RAM when Nvidia does inference on sample directly in the shaders? Disk - bandwidth - VRAM are saved, for a slight cost of performance.
 
Just like Steam then, their revenue would increase since no more second hand physical games.

At least with Steam you can buy keys from other sites and sometimes save a bit of cash. The only option for Playstation is their store. Even Nintendo allows digital codes to be bought from retailers.

Wasn't the disc drive for the PS5 Pro hard to buy for awhile? Hopefully that won't happen again with PS6 but I won't be shocked if it does occur.
 
Of course there will be no disc drive but we'll have the option to add one, just like the Pro. The console is gonna be very expensive so if they can take 100€ off for the announcement, they will.
 
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If NTC is true, and is in the PS6 SDK (which, us unlikely being that Cerny is going with Universal compression, albeit nothing stops them from also using the neural arrays for their own NTC equivalent)

EVERYONE will use it. Immediately. In fact, it would even be a requirement. A compression factor of 6 - 10x, is impossible to ignore. The PS6 will likely use the inference-on-load variant, which amounts to a 6x compression factor. Being able to store 18GB of textures using only 3GB of space... is too much to ignore, and this approach almost comes at no cost at all.

However, what sony seems to be going with is UC, not NTC. they could do both though.
UC and NTC are not mutually exclusive at all
Why would you even convert to BTC in RAM when Nvidia does inference on sample directly in the shaders? Disk - bandwidth - VRAM are saved, for a slight cost of performance.
Inference on sample has a performance cost, inference on load is just a free lunch
 
I hope they do away with discs and go for a sd cartridge or something so it can be compatible with both the ps6 and the portable , disc based media for gaming is such archaic tech as sd cards have far passed what bluray and do in storage and speed . Fucking charging 150 dollars for a DD is dumb as hell , cartridges have always been cooler in my eyes , devs could choose the size of memory card for each game and wouldn't need different console skus as I assume a card reader wouldn't cost alot to have on every system . Bluray damn near 20 years old now , put that shit out to pasture aside from movies and such
 
PS5 SSD speed is overkill for this gen and would be plenty for next gen as well.

Bro you'd be lucky to get a controller at 749$. Lower your expectations.

Sony might go for a PCIe 5.0 SSD but that would obviously be a mistake.

Im grateful you guys are not working in this industry otherwise we are still enjoying the cutting edge Atari 5200 in 2026

Edit: what the f*** is She/They. Lol
 
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I hope they do away with discs and go for a sd cartridge or something so it can be compatible with both the ps6 and the portable , disc based media for gaming is such archaic tech as sd cards have far passed what bluray and do in storage and speed . Fucking charging 150 dollars for a DD is dumb as hell , cartridges have always been cooler in my eyes , devs could choose the size of memory card for each game and wouldn't need different console skus as I assume a card reader wouldn't cost alot to have on every system . Bluray damn near 20 years old now , put that shit out to pasture aside from movies and such
Agreed, but we'd also have to pay up for these things to materialize. The cost of producing Switch 2 cards will be nothing compared to such a medium. Which is probably one reason companies like Nintendo want to avoid it. Most GAFers would gladly pay the extra, but the vast majority of consumers won't.
 
If NTC is true, and is in the PS6 SDK (which, us unlikely being that Cerny is going with Universal compression, albeit nothing stops them from also using the neural arrays for their own NTC equivalent)

EVERYONE will use it. Immediately. In fact, it would even be a requirement. A compression factor of 6 - 10x, is impossible to ignore. The PS6 will likely use the inference-on-load variant, which amounts to a 6x compression factor. Being able to store 18GB of textures using only 3GB of space... is too much to ignore, and this approach almost comes at no cost at all.

However, what sony seems to be going with is UC, not NTC. they could do both though.
The benefits are certainly there, but even something less disruptive like Kraken took a while for everyone to implement on PS5 even though the benefits were massive right out the box for not much work. In this case, you literally have to redesign how textures work. You need to train individual MLPs for every single texture, identify the most optimal latent texture and not ship the original texture at all. That's a significant workflow change that most devs and artists wouldn't even know how to do without proper training and trial and error.

And NTC cannot be used as-is with traditional anisotropic filtering. So they either need to use stochastic filtering, which is even more bleeding edge with tons of drawbacks yet to be overcome in research, fall back to NTBC or do something creative like a pre-filtered inference (like Ubisoft did recently).

And if they instead use NTBC, then the benefits of lower VRAM usage are gone.

To truly reap the benefits of NTC, you need to implement something like this Ubisoft approach:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/news/...exture-compression-in-assassin-s-creed-mirage

They released a paper on this approach a little while ago. A really good read and likely where all NTC implementations will go:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16121

But to do this across the board and actually ensure good performance and production readiness, you have to have Neural Arrays and Cooperative Vectors, both of which won't be available till devkits go out next year. Performance would suck without them. Until then, they would just be experimental in nature. It's certainly the future, but launch window is unrealistic imo. I can see a couple of Sony studios (like Insomniac) and a couple of 3rd parties jumping onboard right away, but the majority will likely take years.

On the topic of UC, I have no idea as there is no material out there. My understanding is it will be in the path of the CUs and VRAM. Not SSD and GPU (i.e. the I/O complex). My guess would be they would likely work hand in hand.
 
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UC and NTC are not mutually exclusive at all

Inference on sample has a performance cost, inference on load is just a free lunch

The cost seems minimal though, the demos had big FPS impacts (because ~1000 fps) but it's in the ~0.5ms I recall? In a game setting that should be fine.
 
Agreed, but we'd also have to pay up for these things to materialize. The cost of producing Switch 2 cards will be nothing compared to such a medium. Which is probably one reason companies like Nintendo want to avoid it. Most GAFers would gladly pay the extra, but the vast majority of consumers won't.
Probably less material then to keep producing the disc drives and an otherwise dead medium , it would be nice to see what a playstation can look like without a DD factored into its design . People buying the ps6 portable would differently buy them !!
 
So is this coming next year like the Xbox or 2028? I would've thought with the pro raised prices it would be 2028 or later.
 
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I'm curious.

Why?

RAM?
People keep saying it but I don't know why they would postpone the next console. If things aren't better in almost 2 more years then what's another year going to do? There's just no guarantee at that point that even waiting would help so might as well just release the console and hope you can do a price drop soon after.
 
Price mentioned is wo disk drive
Console itself will use detachable like Slim/Pro
And actual SKUs depends on packaging and market demand
That would be wise. No option, no buy from me. Although the handheld will likely be all digital. No way they will put games on memory sticks and discs for both.
 
I'm curious.

Why?

RAM?

People keep saying it but I don't know why they would postpone the next console. If things aren't better in almost 2 more years then what's another year going to do? There's just no guarantee at that point that even waiting would help so might as well just release the console and hope you can do a price drop soon after.

Because the market isn't in a place to allow a new hardware generation any reasonable amount of success.

Component costs are sky high (RAM, SSDs, etc..), tariffs are fucking up US pricing even further, the gaming industry is literally crashing as we speak, the value of the dollar is in the shithole, we're in the midst of a recession in every way but name, and frankly consumer interest in a next-gen console is very low right now.


The real question is why in the hell would these corporations actually want to release a new console generation right now?
 
Im grateful you guys are not working in this industry otherwise we are still enjoying the cutting edge Atari 5200 in 2026

Edit: what the f*** is She/They. Lol

No game is even close to maxing that SSD speed, bottlenecks for performance/image quality are elsewhere.

I doubt they will Overengineer SSD like that for next gen (but it should be a bit faster anyway).
 
The real question is why in the hell would these corporations actually want to release a new console generation right now?
Because the money for it has already been spent and there is no meaningful way to estimate when and if all the issues you stated will recover. The longer you wait, the more obsolete the tech you sunk millions in R&D would become. The factors at play aren't short term issues anymore. Unless we are just talking moving things between quarters to adjust for pricing volatility, manufacturing or supply issues, you are likely better off launching an expensive product in limited numbers and adjusting volumes and pricing based on demand, than sidelining it and writing off the R&D that went into it.

If you were in the position of valve, launching right in the middle of a crisis, a delay would make sense as you have no idea where the wind is blowing a couple of months from now. But end of next year? Might as well put it out there.
 
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They'll sell to people via disc and digital download, catering to both.

They will kill physical games next gen, mark my words.

Both Sony and publishers want this form of selling games to die. Of course this won't happen at first but few years later...

We can observe this right now, physical games have very limited quantities, I see new games selling out on day 1. Nothing like that happened even few years ago.
 
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They will kill physical games next gen, mark my words.

Both Sony and publishers want this form of selling games to die. Of course this won't happen at first but few years later...

We can observe this right now, physical games have very limited quantities, I see new games selling out on day 1. Nothing like that happened even few years ago.
Kill physical games in the PS6 generation?
 
They'll sell to people via disc and digital download, catering to both.
That's actually how it works at the moment. I don't think anyone is questioning that.

But rather than "selling suckers like myself a $100 disc drive attachment" , they would rather not have to sell disc at all.

And Sony miss out on selling suckers like myself a $100 disc drive attachment?

They dont want to sell you disc at all.
 
That would be something, sell a disc drive but press no current gen games. Would go along swimmingly.
Not my fault people didn't hold on to some of the physical media they sold us for years

Will go over worse if they attempt to force people to leave their disc libraries behind
 
Not my fault people didn't hold on to some of the physical media they sold us for years

Will go over worse if they attempt to force people to leave their disc libraries behind
I am not saying they are not going to sell you a disc attachment for the ps6, it probably will take disc.

Your saying that you are a sucker for buying a $100 disc drive in their eyes, but all things being equal they would not have to cater to the disc crowd at all vs make the $100 for the disc attachment. Thats all. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
No game is even close to maxing that SSD speed, bottlenecks for performance/image quality are elsewhere.

I doubt they will Overengineer SSD like that for next gen (but it should be a bit faster anyway).
Games max it already. It's not something that requires "maxing" anyway. It's just even faster loading than before. Having PCIe 5 support isn't 'overengineering' it's just iterative and better hardware.
 
Games max it already. It's not something that requires "maxing" anyway. It's just even faster loading than before. Having PCIe 5 support isn't 'overengineering' it's just iterative and better hardware.

What games require 5GB/s SSD speed to function properly?
 
Yes, by the end of the generation no big games will have physical releases. PS7 will be DE only.

That's my tragic prediction for the future.
Hard to forecast whats going to happen in 8+ years time. I would say they'll keep going with disc media.
 
I have a gen 5 ssd on my PC so would be cool to see the same thing on PS6.
Would be cool to see what they could do with the extra speed if they choose to take advantage of it (and subsequently perhaps PC games starting to take more advantage of it if it starts to get pushed on console and designed around)
 
The SSD speed is excessive, but it's good that it's so fast for future-proofing; the PS4 would still be relevant if it had an integrated SSD.
 
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What games require 5GB/s SSD speed to function properly?
There is no such thing as "function properly" just as there wasn't when you had 7200rpm SATAIII drives vs 5400rpm SATAII drives. Its just requirements for a given game. Didn't stop people complaining about the lack of SATA3 or low rpm stock drives on PS4 asking for better because it means faster loading and it means faster streaming with a given RAM amount. With more RAM this would become even more important too. Not sure why people are arguing against PCIe5. It's not even limited to the storage speed either.

For a given game with a given streaming/loading requirement (textures/other assets) you can use faster storage or offset it in some ways with higher RAM requirements. If you have both high RAM and fast storage you can improve the game.
 
Because the money for it has already been spent and there is no meaningful way to estimate when and if all the issues you stated will recover. The longer you wait, the more obsolete the tech you sunk millions in R&D would become. The factors at play aren't short term issues anymore. Unless we are just talking moving things between quarters to adjust for pricing volatility, manufacturing or supply issues, you are likely better off launching an expensive product in limited numbers and adjusting volumes and pricing based on demand, than sidelining it and writing off the R&D that went into it.

If you were in the position of valve, launching right in the middle of a crisis, a delay would make sense as you have no idea where the wind is blowing a couple of months from now. But end of next year? Might as well put it out there.

The money hasn't been spent. They haven't manufactured the millions of consoles needed to be ready for the PS6 launch. They've spent money on R&D and probably have some component manufacturing deals in place. But if delaying means selling tens of millions more devices, you can bet your ass that's what they're going to do.

Also, the idea that the tech will become obsolete doesn't make sense because the ENTIRE INDUSTRY is facing this same turmoil. The entire industry is at a developmental standstill right now. So if you push back a release, it's not like you're falling behind compared to the competition. Everyone's in the same boat.
 
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Yes, by the end of the generation no big games will have physical releases. PS7 will be DE only.

That's my tragic prediction for the future.

As the resident Ze/Zir of NeoGAF, you clearly understand things that I don't. So I will accept this prediction without question!
 
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