HEAD START
Leaked PS5 demo reveals loading times are GONE – and games start in under a second
LOADING up a game on the PlayStation 5 will be ten times faster than on PS4, according to a demo shown off by Sony.
A scene that took over 8 seconds to load on top-end PS4 Pro hardware was shown popping up in 0.8 seconds in a video shown to investors.
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This demo, shown off in Japan to an audience of investors by Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki.
The magic happens because the PS4 has to load games off an old-fashioned spinning hard drive, the PS5 will load them straight from a solid-state drive.
HOW IT WORKS
Solid state drives have been found in gaming PCs and fancy laptops, like gaming favourite the Razer Blade Stealth, for some time.
They don't have any moving parts, and your computer can read the data off any part of them right away.
Normal hard drives store data on spinning magnetised plates, so the computer not only needs to spin the plate to be able to read it, it also needs to find and then physically read the correct bit of disc to get the data off it.
The downside is that solid-state drives are much more expensive than normal hard drives, and many fear it's going to push the price of the new console up.
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However, the increased speed means that as well as cutting loading times at the start, things in games can also happen much faster with the new technology.
Games only load a small portion of the game at any one time, and load more as you're playing in the background.
That means that even once it's loaded up you can only move in the game's world as fast as whatever you're playing on can load the new information.
Showing Spider-Man running on both consoles, Sony demonstrated how much faster it would be possible to swing down New York's streets on the new hardware without having to stop so the game could catch up.
When the PS5 specs were revealed, Sony reportedly showed a 15-second in-game loading time cut down to less than a second, but this is the first time we've seen it in action.
MORE TO COME FOR PS4
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The PlayStation 5 and Xbox 2 aren't expected out until 2020 at the earliest, and it looks like the wait could be even longer than that.
At the same presentation, Sony revealed it expects the PS4 to "remain the engine of engagement and profitability" until at least 2022.
They highlighted The Last of Us Part 2, Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima as three exclusive blockbusters "still to come" for PS4 too.
That doesn't rule out the possibility that any or all of those games could end up being released for PS5 as well, though.
Sony also said it was going to "work on keeping and improving relationships with outside game developers" to make sure PlayStation remained "the best place to play".
This is in contrast to Microsoft's strategy which has focused on buying studios, although they recently revealed a technology tie-up with Sony and have urged the industry to work together on technology to make games safer.
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MOST READ IN GAMING
These points could all be moot anyway, with some experts suggesting that game streaming means the PlayStation 5 and Xbox 2 will be the last consoles you ever own.
Microsoft has dismissed this saying streaming technology like Google Stadia and its own xCloud service that will let you play Xbox games on your phone and PC will be complementary to consoles rather than replacing them.
Still, expect to hear more about both streaming and new consoles at E3 next month, with Google expected to reveal more information about Stadia and Microsoft plotting a counter-punch and potentially revealing more about the Xbox 2.
Sony, however, won't be there to spill more PS5 details - they're skipping the annual gaming extravaganza for the first time in its history.
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