SSD Mandatory for Next-Gen Games?

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The discovery that a solid state hard drive in your PS3 can seriously reduce load times in certain games has prompted the crew at Shacknews to ask if SSDs should be mandatory for any next-gen console. Well, what do you think?

If developers are going to continue to use local storage for caching and quicker loading, when compared to optical drives, I think solid-state drives are mandatory for any next-gen console.
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It would be nice, games will only get higher res, the load times will only increase
 
would be nice but unlikely unless they get down to $ .25 per Gig
 
Probably won't happen considering a good size SSD is more than the consoles are selling for... Until we start seeing sub $100 200+GB SSDs, the best we can hope for is the ability to upgrade the hard drive.
 
ehhhh I duno. I don't want to see a 600 dollar price tag on any console ever again.
 
Next gen consoles are a few years out. It all depends on what the price of flash does. I would not be shocked.
 
That sort of mass adoption can only be a good thing.

Wildace said:
would be nice but unlikely unless they get down to $ .25 per Gig
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$.25 per GB? Normal HDDs still have not reached that level...
 
With next gen consoles at least 2 or 3 years away it would seam like perfect timing, it's not like a console would need a 500gb hard drive just for gaming so a reasonable size would not cost a crazy amount in a couple years or so.

Also if consoles were to use SSD's I'm sure it would help reduce the cost due to higher demand/sales.
 
Maybe my math is wrong, but wouldn't a 1TB HDD costing $70 be $.07 / GB?
 
eth3ton said:
That sort of mass adoption can only be a good thing.



$.25 per GB? Normal HDDs still have not reached that level...
Click to expand...

Yes they have.

You can easily get a 2TB for ~100$, which comes out to .20$/GB, and if you look for deals you can do even better.
 
eth3ton said:
That sort of mass adoption can only be a good thing.



$.25 per GB? Normal HDDs still have not reached that level...
Click to expand...

that's 4gb per dollar, making a 400gb drive $100..

and considering you can get a 1tb drive for < 150

i would say it's well below that point ;)
 
eth3ton said:
That sort of mass adoption can only be a good thing.



$.25 per GB? Normal HDDs still have not reached that level...
Click to expand...

Ignorance is Strength :p

You should have provided examples of what you meant :eek:

2 TB's are easily gotten for under $100, I think there was a sale where you could grab 2 TB's for $80ish or $90ish dollars just the other week.
 
Yup... I failed math. Don't know what I was thinking. I even typed GB and was thinking TB. I still stand by the first part of my post. That kind of demand from the console market could only be a good thing for SSDs.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
Yes they have.

You can easily get a 2TB for ~100$, which comes out to .20$/GB, and if you look for deals you can do even better.
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newegg has 2tb drives 89.99

but im not really talking about end user prices per gb. im talking about what it would cost MS or Sony to buy the drives for their system.

250GB SSD at .25 would cost MS or Sony $62.5 just for the SSD which should be acceptable but a long long way off....
 
As some have said. SSD's need to drastically come down in price.

And people like Microsoft need to stop overcharging by almost 150% on platter HDD's.
 
Do they really increase load times? Example a game loads up in 1 minute using a regular sata drive. If installed on a SSD what kind of increase could I see?
 
Load times on current gen console games are atrocious. The SSD's would need to be large enough to load up a good 10 full games.
 
eth3ton said:
That sort of mass adoption can only be a good thing.



$.25 per GB? Normal HDDs still have not reached that level...
Click to expand...
Um, yes they have. 2TB drives sell for ~$100 now which is $.05 per GB. Or are you trying to do Verizon math? :p
 
russnuck said:
Maybe my math is wrong, but wouldn't a 1TB HDD costing $70 be $.07 / GB?
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You have the right idea... just that most HDD companies count that "1TB" as 1000GB and most software counts them as 1024GB - so it would be $0.068359~/GB :p

Still I know I'd be delighted if most, or any, SSDs were close to $0.25/GB. As that would mean I could buy a 256GB SSD for about $62.50. Do you think that will happen any time soon? I know I sure don't!
 
Cannydog said:
Still I know I'd be delighted if most, or any, SSDs were close to $0.25/GB. As that would mean I could buy a 256GB SSD for about $62.50. Do you think that will happen any time soon? I know I sure don't!
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I don't see it all that soon, but SSD prices are definitely dropping. By the time the next gen consoles are to be released, I could see SSD prices being low enough that it would still be economically sound to include them.

Remember, when we price out SSD's (most of us, I would say), we're looking at the top-of-the-line consumer SSD's available on the market. Who's to say Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo couldn't get a great bulk contract on some run of the mill SSD's. Still would be noticeably faster than any magnetic drive.

I think the issue still comes down to storage space availability, can't find much larger than 250gb, unless you want to pay a hell of a price premium that doesn't seem relative to the cost/gb to smaller SSD's. Perhaps I'm off on this point though, as I haven't seriously priced out SSD's in a while. :)
 
Spiko said:
ehhhh I duno. I don't want to see a 600 dollar price tag on any console ever again.
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Considering that they'll probably hit a 10 year lifespan like the current consoles likely will It probably will, which brings me to my point. I can see an SSD used for purposes of speeding up the game loading and swap, but I still bet the future consoles will use traditional drives for game save storage, or hopefully storage space for downloaded games. I'm pretty sure that SSDs will be around $.50 a GB 4 years from now, which is about what drives were when the 360 came out, but SSDs will probably be in size similar to how that first drive was, decent, but still kind of small.
 
Cataulin said:
Do they really increase load times? Example a game loads up in 1 minute using a regular sata drive. If installed on a SSD what kind of increase could I see?
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I put a SSD in my PS3 a few weeks ago, a 40GB Kingston (Intel-made) and in Gran Turismo 5 it greatly reduced the time it takes to load between menus, load cars, load races / tracks, etc. I haven't measured the difference but I think it cut the time to load most of these screens by more than half, though during some of the time it does not flash the disk light so something else mustbe contributing to the delay. Presumably it would also improve performance with other disk-intensive games such as GTA, which when I played it always seemed to have occasional hiccups when travelling at high speeds.
 
In regards to the discussion about SSDs being to expensive still. What does a xbox 360 hard drive currently cost compared to a SSD in terms of cost/GB?

What is more likely to happen is a base system with very low storage space, everything loads off the disc. Branded Hard Drive selling at a hefty premium, faster loading times, as an add on. Premium Branded SSDs, fastest loading times, as an add on 6-12 months later. Both of which cost several times more per/GB then comparable consumer drives on the market.
 
All you need is a 40GB if you can handle having 5 or 6 games installed at once. Those cost 100$ now and will probably drop to $70 next year.

Still, for 100$ you can get 1-2TB easily with a mechanical HD, so you gotta decide between crazy fast loads or crazy big size.
 
That would be nice, but they will burn themselves out faster than a OS dedicated SSD in my mind.
But by the time that we need truly SSD's as our game loading drive, I have a feeling that the number of their write/read's before burning out will be too large to worry about
 
Other benefits of the ssd I believe for consoles:

Reduced power
Reduced heat
Reduced failure rate compared to a hard drive
 
sarcasm on
Wow, what a discovery, SSD's read access times are faster than 2.5" hard drives...

Those dudes at digital foundry definitely have found something out that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY ever knew. People should try putting SSD's into notebook computers to see if they're faster than the 2.5" 7200 RPM hard drives.
sarcasm off

Gawd, they stuck a $230 SSD into a $299 console. Hardly cost effective, but some people will pay $200 to reduce load times by 15-30 seconds. But hey, at least it beats the XBOX360 which only allows 16GB flash drives through USB 2.0.

Next, they'll come to the realization that if consoles had 8 GB of DRAM and a smart predictive caching algorithm that would decrease load times to nearly ZERO.
 
It doesn't even have to be a fast transfer speed SSD. Even a basic one with .001 random access time would be so useful to both next gen consoles.

Sony however needs to learn how to stream information off Blu Rays better , 45 minute installs for any game regardless if its only 1 is completely unacceptable. Having to install a new set of data each time MGS4 had to load in a new section was also retarded.

The next Xbox also MUST include a hard drive. It was a massive mistake to make it a non-requirement for the 360. Having a hard drive is a giant plus in every way and the first Xbox benefited massively from it allowing developers a lot more flexability.
 
limitedaccess said:
In regards to the discussion about SSDs being to expensive still. What does a xbox 360 hard drive currently cost compared to a SSD in terms of cost/GB?

What is more likely to happen is a base system with very low storage space, everything loads off the disc. Branded Hard Drive selling at a hefty premium, faster loading times, as an add on. Premium Branded SSDs, fastest loading times, as an add on 6-12 months later. Both of which cost several times more per/GB then comparable consumer drives on the market.
Click to expand...
Cheapest 250gb Xbox 360 harddrives are about $125. A 256gb SSD is still about 4 times that.

Another issue with SSDs is while they are much faster, most people would only look at the size. If the Xbox 720 came with a 1TB harddrive and the Playstation 4 came with a 256GB SSD, Sony would have a lot of explaining to do to explain why their hard drive is better to the average consumer.
 
Wildace said:
would be nice but unlikely unless they get down to $ .25 per Gig
Click to expand...

Ah, but if the console makers wanted to use them, the economy of scale provided by increasing SSD production to meet the demand would lower the price somewhat, plus, they don't pay retail.
 
So console gamers discovered that SSD's are fast...I wonder if they'll go outside and "discover" that the sky is blue! :eek:
 
an SSD ought to be mandatory for any next generation anything...

Already today I see an SSD as a boot-drive necessity in a high performance PC.

Personally, I have no more spinning drives in my rig.

I've got my 120gig SSD for booting the OS and running programs/games, everything else is on my 7.25TB NAS...
 
siliconnerd said:
Cheapest 250gb Xbox 360 harddrives are about $125. A 256gb SSD is still about 4 times that.

Another issue with SSDs is while they are much faster, most people would only look at the size. If the Xbox 720 came with a 1TB harddrive and the Playstation 4 came with a 256GB SSD, Sony would have a lot of explaining to do to explain why their hard drive is better to the average consumer.
Click to expand...

This is why using an SSD for everything is silly. You get a smallish SSD for OS/programs/games, and get something bigger thats slow and cheap for your music library/ videos / etc.
 
next console isn't rumors to be out until sometime after 2012... pretty sure SSD should be standard by then.
 
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