Sony ‘Isn’t Hearing’ PS5 Storage Criticisms, Says PlayStation Boss

Jim Ryan, the big cheese of PlayStation, has shook off criticisms that the PlayStation 5's solid state drive is too small for the requirements of the next generation of gaming.

The console's internal SSD is 825GB, which isn't nothing, but it isn't huge. It was all gravy until it was discovered that the operating system of the PlayStation 5 consumes over 160GB of this chunk, leaving approximately 664GB for games and applications. "That's hundreds upon hundreds of gigabytes, surely there'll be enough space for my favourite games!" I hear you cry. Well. Astro's Playroom is already installed on all PlayStation 5s, so we'll not count that one. Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War uses a fifth of this total, and NBA 2K21 and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition (which bundles in the remaster of Marvel's Spider-Man, mind) also ask for more than 100GB of storage space... each. Now, that 1TB SSD of the Xbox Series X is sounding mighty roomy to me.

Furthermore, the PlayStation 5's SSD is not expandable at the moment. That functionality will arrive after launch in an update yet to be dated officially. And, PlayStation 5 games aren't able to be held externally on hard drives. Sony has stated that it will consider it as an option in the future, but we're in the now, dude. The now isn't looking so fresh for PlayStation 5 players who want to make the most of the storage available and enjoy all of their favourite titles.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Ryan said that it's no sweat, pal. Or, something to that effect. "We're not hearing that," he answered to a question about the hurdles players have found with the console's small SSD. "We'll obviously watch what happens as people unbox their PlayStations and start to use them. We think we'll be okay. We obviously are able to monitor hard drive usage on the PS4 microscopically and everything that we saw there indicates that we should be fine." There's nothing to worry about. PlayStation is going to use the data from its current-generation console to inform the direction of its next-generation console.

The silver lining in this story is that the console will absolutely enjoy expandable storage options in the future. And, at the moment, there aren't a vast number of PlayStation 5s out in the wild yet. We're waiting on titles like Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Far Cry 6, and Gran Turismo 7. Sony confirmed very early on that more than 4,000 PlayStation 4 titles will be available on the PS5, so perhaps this is an appropriate time to crack on with your backlog.