sony confirmed the long-awaited PlayStation 5 console today (finally), a console that will arrive for the holidays of 2020. One of the innovations is the format in which the hard copy games will come: for one 100 GB BDXL Blu-ray Discs. This eliminates all restrictions on the total size for game developers.
From the end of next year, PlayStation’s disk games will be available in 2 different formats: Blu-Ray 2 50GB layers for PS4 and Blu-Ray BDXL 100GB. Although both generations overlap, Sony plans to support the PS4 until at least 2022. Since the PS5 is backward compatible with all PS4 games, it’s likely that we’ll see two variants of every PS game on the market.
Despite the increase in weight of the games, it is necessary to consider another factor: the SSD. These new storage units outperform the hard drives of the current PS4s in terms of speed, which is why the difference in game size is offset by the speed of the SSD.
SSDs are not only faster, but also more efficient. That’s why developers no longer have to worry about heavy copies for their games. Players now have more control over what is installed and what is removed, while developers have more space for the game without worrying about heavy textures and so on. Of course, this only makes the product more expensive, but we are sure that many users will make the sacrifice.