News More details emerge regarding the Xbox Series X/S's storage options

You can say it's not essential, but really it is pretty essential with new games regularly going into the 100+Gb range. You might only manage 2-3 games on the S.

 

What happened to housekeeping and uninstalling games you've finished?

 

Ah who wants to do that?? I'm pleased I went with a 4tb external drive for my PS4; just over 100 full game installs at the moment and still loads of space to go

 

Game Pass has changed the way I play games. Used to be install one and play to the end, these days I tend to have 3-4 on the go at any one time, plus what I'm playing on PC. No way I'd consider a series S due to the lack of hdd space.

Plus, when do you finish a multiplayer title?

 

The plug in SSD isn't too badly priced, it's more or less in the middle of pricing for a 1tb pci-e4.0 SSD, but it's still a big old chunk of cash to stump up for a games console accessory. The PS4 having a standard M.2 slot is the better solution for sure.

Welcome to throttleville, population, you. Also, there's still plenty of people out there on data caps.

 

All valid points, thanks. Guess I'm the odd one out (again).

 

My gaming pc has a 500gb sata ssd. I was on fttp for a while though.

 

c: OS drive
d: games
e: game recordings and downloads

All of them are SSDs. I don't need more, because I just delete what I don't play. 100 Mbit/s connection takes care of a sudden urge to play game X.

 

I suspect more consoles also end up shared than gaming pcs, with them often being in living rooms

My other half plays on the Xbone, so also has games downloaded. Anyone with kids then has to throw more storage needs into the mix.

Game streaming might help with that if MS do bring it to console, but then a Series S is overkill as a streaming box. A Pi3 has done me fine for Steam Link.

 

Takes a while to download 100Gb of games data, so I often leave games on, fortunately they can be archived with fast usb drives and deleted quick these days if you do run out of space but I tend to have so many drives lying around I would pop old PC SSDs in my consoles, it used to take as long to delete as it did to install, SSDs really helped, using standard disk drives made it cheap for me, special carts required here, less than ideal but for a manufacturer wanting to control the experience you can understand making it none standard.

 

Don't remember data caps being a thing in the UK unless you were using Satellite. But as I've found since I moved to California, I have 2 ISP options, both with data caps as they advertise based on speed and reliability.

I'm currently with Cox who had a 1TB per month usage limit when we signed up last year. They've increased this to 1.25TB since July (and immediately prior to that was a couple of months where they removed the cap - which shows how much BS it is to have one in the 1st place).

As both my other half and I are home most of the time, we're using a lot of it (limit is listed as 1280GB):

July - 985GB
August - 747GB
September - 788GB
October so far - 630GB

That's simply from streaming (lots of) HD videos and me using the Xbox One X I have online. We have a 4K TV but intentionally avoid streaming 4K videos on it to help stick to the limit.

So downloading a 100GB game has to be managed carefully. 2 per month would probably put us over. For that reason, redownloading isn't an option.


As for the Series S, Microsoft has stated that game downloads should be smaller - we just don't know by how much. Microsoft's argument is that they can put less in thanks to games being smaller but I'm not convinced (especially as from the 1TB SSD in the X, previews are suggesting around 800GB of usable space - so if could be as little as 300GB on the S). If I compare the 4K download packs for the One X and compare that to the required download for the One S version - it might not be very much space at all.

As for the PS5 having the better option... I'm not so sure. It's far easier to ask a parent to buy the Seagate SSD (one very specific product) for more space over asking them to buy an m.2 NVME drive that might not work (especially as Sony have yet to certify any).

 

I was thinking more the US and Canada than Western Europe. Although we get plenty of throttling to go with 'unlimited' data, which also doesn't really affect me out in the boonies. I'm still not sure who the Series S is supposed to be for. A cheaper device for those with less disposable income, but it more or less requires an uncapped, fast internet connection and has no capacity for second hand games, ruling out those without hefty disposable incomes. Maybe I've missed something.

I'm expecting that to work out like Sony's certified drives on the PS3, shove any old drive in it and it will probably work, Sony just won't guarantee it will work and offer all the advertised featuers if it's not certified. If they do some hardware locking shenanigans I'll be surprised.

 

Sony has been pretty good with compatibility in general, works in their favor, they have already said that you can archive on to usb drives, so you can make space for games on the main drive, you can only play ps4 games from USB, ps5 have to be played from internal ssd.

 

The thing is that they are yet to announce which M.2 NVME drives will be white-listed to work with the PS5. And that is exactly what they said: they will release a list (which most likely will be updated over the years as new drives become available) of the drives the PS5 will accept. In Sony-speak that very likely means "these drives and no other".

 

You guys need cable. Anything over 200mbs..bits..bytes I forget. Not worried about internet in years and I'm in the UK. We are famous for bad net. When you move home internet needs to be a factor you...factor in. Life is going more online, not less. I feel for you guys in the sticks but connectivity needs to be a part of the agreement.

 

This is exactly how I understood what I've read: it's an 'allow' list. I don't know if DirectStorage implementations on PC will also have allow lists, but from what I understand the underlying limitation is still there: the GPU having direct IO access to the SSD means that you're going to need a damn fast SSD to get any benefit from it.

The only one I've seen reported that might be certified for the PS5 is the Samsung 980 Pro, with its claimed 7000MB/s read.

 

Yeah, just look at the numbers regarding SSD speed Sony claimed in their presentations. There are very few drives (1) that deliver the performance they apparently require for their fast resume and fast load features.