The PS5 is full of incredibly exciting tech, but the thing that the vast majority of people are most excited to see in action is the SSD. Well, not literally the SSD, the thing doesn't even move, but the effects it will have on how games are both designed and played is sure to be huge.
An SSD allows for substantially faster loading than a traditional HDD, and that's because it has no moving parts. That means it doesn't have to root around behind the sofa to find the next part of the level, it can just hand it to you before you've finished asking.
This should mean less time spent loading in games and far more time actually playing them. It also means that we won't have to suffer through hidden loading screens any more.
That means no more crawling through small gaps, riding elevators, or having to open really heavy doors. It's not just us excited about it though, so is one of the co-creators of the Halo series.
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"It will make a huge difference"
Marcus Lehto, who used to be the art director at Bungie and worked on the massive battlefields of the original Halo, talked to VGC about the PS5 SSD, and why he's excited.
“It will open up the door for more expansive content that can stream a lot faster. Players won’t be waiting on load screens and we won’t have to hide loading behind cinematics and that kind of thing." Goodbye sweet elevator music, we hardly knew ye.
“I guess one of the benefits of having been in the games industry for so long is that second nature to build environments with some boundaries around it and understanding the memory limits, draw distance limits, shader overdraw… that just comes as second nature."
Read more: Will the PS5 and Xbox Series X kill our current consoles?
A fond farewell to current-gen consoles?
It's not just that particular blight that'll change, though. He also thinks it'll be a big deal for those who are a bit bored of working on the current-gen consoles.
"I am really excited about that because that’s one of the things that’s really hard for us in particular right now: dealing with those old platforms. These platforms have been around for what, seven years? Developing for them is like developing for machinery in the stone age."
Seven years isn't quite the stone age, but given how quickly tech advances you can certainly see how it might feel like it.
Even just this small change will make things seem completely different from a gameplay perspective, and the way that game worlds are built could change entirely as well. It's very exciting.
Read more: Will the Nintendo Switch Pro have an SSD?