I think you’re totally wrong. Being able to completely change your dataset in memory within any given second is absolutely a sea change.
SSDs and better decryption/decompression hardware will reduce the current 30+ seconds of load time in many games down to ~5 seconds. It will not noticeably increase the number of games that avoid loading screens entirely - that will still take large, AAA tier engineering effort - and it will not particularly enable any new techniques. Loading is not simply “move data from hard drive into memory”; there is a lot of other work that will still need to happen and takes time.
There have been examples of new game play that could only be done on new gen hardware not just ‘looks better’. Shadow of Mordor on the Xbox 360 didn’t have the Nemesis system(which was really cool) because it couldn’t run it.
There’s a lot of talk here about “load times” like it’s just what you see when you’re starting a game or using fast travel. Like Cerny said for decades games have been mostly “loading” during gameplay. Elevator rides, winding tunnels, walk and talks, cramped pathways, limited sight-lines, all of these are to the benefit of “loading” and entire worlds are designed with those limitations.
I am really looking forward to game worlds that aren’t designed around HDD limitations. I’m not sure how big a difference PS5 vs XSX will be in this arena but it does sound like PS5 has something really special.
I don’t think people realize what kind of impact this will have on the overall experience (loading times, the overall design of the game worlds, UX). Shocking, unexpected things will be possible.
Going back to previous gen games will feel terrible after it.
Nothing shocking will happen. Games will just load faster.
Game levels are explicitly designed around loading, it’s not just the initial game load. Look at the recent Jedi Fallen Order for example and all the narrow passageways you need to squeeze through.
I enjoyed the narrow passageways in Tomb Raider 2013 and Jedi Fallen Order. I hope the new SSDs don’t mean those are gone from the next generation of games.
Conversely, look at every open world game, most of which take place entirely outdoors and have no noticeable load times.
Certainly, you may see less narrow passages and elevators, but that will not be a “shocking, unexpected” gameplay improvement. Games will not be transformed by this. They’ll just load faster.
They’re really still just Space Invaders.
They’ll be there for story reasons, and not at regular intervals.
Except fast travel. And look at all the popin, limits to traveral speed, limitation to biome diversity in a given area, or geographic features intended to hide other regions from view.
Stusser in denial. The idea of a game needing to load will die!
Is backward compatibility really that big a deal? When I moved from the PS3 to the PS4, I kept the PS3 for a very small number of games I stilled played on it but within probably 3 months I was only playing PS4 games. If I had a game on the PS3 I really had to keep playing, I would have just kept the PS3 and switched HDMI cables when I wanted to play on it.
It was a big deal to me because my PS3 died. So I didn’t have the option of playing on it. Plus for most people, you want to reduce clutter and get rid of old consoles. Much easier to just keep the old games rather than still have the old machine and the wires still around the TV.
It is very likely the difference between me buying year 1 instead of year 3 or 4. I don’t get consoles early on. I haven’t done that since PS1 and then Wii.
Not as much this gen as before, but it’s certainly worth something to people who’ve had PS+ for the last 5 years. They’ll have hundreds of games they can play on the PS5, and everyone who didn’t have a PS4 will also have access to hundreds they can download on Playstation Now.
With things right now a lot of people might be selling their playstations to pay some bills.
That’s the main thing, I have an ancient PlayStation and a PS2 that I still use to play some old games, I can’t imagine they have that many more good days left in them. I can tell you honestly that backward compatability is the only reason I would buy a PS5, I’ve got enough current games on other platforms to keep me happy with them.
This will be the first time I buy one of those controller skins.
That is one ugly controller. :D
That certainly is fugly. And they missed the message, what people actually want is flippers on the rear.