PlayStation 5

Yeah, it’s not just a Sackboy thing either. The way Sony integrated the SSD into the PS5 is a big deal, just as they said it would be before it was even available.

Even two years after its release I’m not sure I’d label the PS5 as “available”! :D

Honestly, even with my old-school first get PS4, the addition of an SSD to the system produced absolutely immense performance improvements. And that wasn’t any kind of fancy integration like they have in the next gen consoles, it was literally just an SSD plugged in via USB.

The point is that there are bottlenecks in PCs that are making games on PC struggle with things that are running lickety split on PS5.

The stuttering thing requires shader recompilation on PCs all the time. Like, if you update your video driver, have to do it again. If you’ve played Warzone on PC, you’ve seen it. It’s a constant wait for that stuff and super annoying, but it’s also the only way to avoid all the stuttering problems now.

Not sure how PCs will ever get around that issue. It seems to be inherent in the way a PC works.

Forza Horizon games do a good job on this on the PC. Every time there’s a reason to do a shader compilation, it does it at the start, on the loading screen before it loads the game world. It’s a long wait, sure, but it prevents stuttering in the game due to shader compilation. Every game should do it like that.

Well, it’s inherent to the way DirectX 12 and Vulkan work. Not an issue with DX 11 games.

I stopped posting availability notices for it on this forum and in this thread because they’re so readily available – or were before the holiday season – that I figured anyone who wanted one and could afford one had one.

If that’s not the case, I’ll keep posting when they come available. It has been very much available though over the last 3-4 months.

Yep. If you’re waiting for “can buy on a whim walking into a big box retailer” they may not be available. But anyone who is trying should have one by now.

Agreed. I’ve been offered chances to buy by Sony themselves a couple times despite already owning one! I’ll gladly offer for people if I get that again, but I figured no one was still looking here, or able to DIY it.

This is the ideal way to handle it, but remember that all games work differently as far as what they’re loading and when. Racing games have a certain leg up that way given the courses and available areas are always sort of defined ahead of time. Surely that’s the case for a lot of other games too, but it isn’t always one size fits all.

And the wait is a part of the problem… gamers don’t like to wait.

Ahh, I signed up for the ‘invitation’ thing on Amazon a while back and still haven’t received one & never got one from the PS store either so I gave up. I’ll have to poke around again and see if I can find one again.

Here you go!

That’s unbundled, btw. $499 disc version.

$399 digital version also available.

The PS5 load times have been nice but not life changing. It’s funny because they feel “normal” now. But I don’t particularly notice them when I go back to Switch or PC because that feels normal too.

The only load time I’ve noticed lately is Bannerlord at startup. It’s a few beats longer than I’d expect.

Thanks trigger!

Nice. I’m not in the market for one yet, but it’s nice to see the unbundled version being sold by Sony again.

In-stock again.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/PlayStation-5-Console-God-of-War-Ragnar-k-Bundle/1474753654

Heh. $560. So a $10 discount on a full priced GoW Ragnarok I guess.

It’s a good deal on a bundle to get the console and a strongly-reviewed exclusive game.

But if that’s not your thing, you can get one from Sony Direct at MSRP:

The DualSense may be the least durable controller I’ve ever owned. I don’t think I’m hard on them at all and have managed to lose two to left stick issues and my third’s right trigger is starting to click intermittently. Never had this issue with the past DualShocks or Xbox controllers.

I really don’t want to reward Sony by buying yet another controller… but they are on sale for 50 bucks.

The only difference between disc and discless is storage and size, right? I mean, there’s no backward compatibility to speak of, and if you already have a disc player of some sort for the odd Blu Ray…