General external expansion discussion? *spawn*

goonergaz said:
Those are soldered directly onto the mobo in a bespoke setup aren’t they?

I think the issue is having both a connection and technology as fast as Sony’s solution was likely either not possible or cost prohibitive.

They likely had data from pre Covid that had ‘off the shelf’ products predicted to be available around launch and then sh*t happened.

If Sony had known where we would be sitting today when the decisions were made it would have been an easy pot of gold.
Click to expand...
Well we are now at the end of april what 6 months (half a year) after launch. I don't really buy covid as a reason at this point in time.

Sony could have designed their own port / connector and just shipped the same set up that is on the playstation 5.
 
eastmen said:
Sony could have designed their own port / connector and just shipped the same set up that is on the playstation 5.
Click to expand...
Sony turned their back on custom drives/storage for their home consoles in 2006 and never looked back. I certainly don't want them to go back there.
 
eastmen said:
Well we are now at the end of april what 6 months (half a year) after launch. I don't really buy covid as a reason at this point in time.
Click to expand...
You have no idea, the impact of Covid has be significant around the world in all markets and ways we work - we've only just come out of a lockdown in the UK and don't know if/when/where we can just go on a holiday, yet you want answers for a minor issue on a system you don't even own lol

DSoup said:
Sony turned their back on custom drives/storage for their home consoles in 2006 and never looked back. I certainly don't want them to go back there.
Click to expand...
No, it's much better to have limited and expensive proprietary solutions than give the consumer free choice.
 
goonergaz said:
You have no idea, the impact of Covid has be significant around the world in all markets and ways we work - we've only just come out of a lockdown in the UK and don't know if/when/where we can just go on a holiday, yet you want answers for a minor issue on a system you don't even own lol


No, it's much better to have limited and expensive proprietary solutions than give the consumer free choice.
Click to expand...

goonergaz said:
lol, well you can use external drives - let's say 'limited' choice...but it's short term pain for long term gain
Click to expand...

Who says I don't own a ps5 ?

We are 6 months past launch and we still can't expand hard drive space for ps5 games and have to shuffle them on and off external drives. We've had the fastest pc nvme drive release and apparently its still not good enough. so whats the hold up.

Not sure what the long term gain will be by delaying the support. Either the fastest pc drives will be supported and at that point why wait to allow people to use them or they need even faster drives which means your going to pay a bigger premium anyway since those drives don't exist now.
 
eastmen said:
We are 6 months past launch and we still can't expand hard drive space for ps5 games and have to shuffle them on and off external drives. We've had the fastest pc nvme drive release and apparently its still not good enough. so whats the hold up.
Click to expand...
The fastest PCI4.0 NVMe drive is the WD Black SN850 which has a peak raw throughput of 7,000MB/s vs. PS5's 5,500MB/s. However external drives need to be someway faster than PS5's drive because there are less priority channels: six on PS5 versus two on NVMe. Is 27% faster sufficient? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Are there other aspects of NVMe drives that make them unsuitable? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sony have said the internal slot will be enabled this summer, which given we are almost in May is just around the corner. I can imagine a concern for Sony is inadvertently saying a drive is good, only for some future PS5 title to really push the drive in some weird way for the the game to have issues. If I bought a drive that Sony said was good, then found Horizon Forbidden West stuttered like crap, I'd be annoyed. I'd rather wait and be sure their qualification process is solid.
 
DSoup said:
The fastest PCI4.0 NVMe drive is the WD Black SN850 which has a peak raw throughput of 7,000MB/s vs. PS5's 5,500MB/s. However external drives need to be someway faster than PS5's drive because there are less priority channels: six on PS5 versus two on NVMe. Is 27% faster sufficient? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Are there other aspects of NVMe drives that make them unsuitable? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sony have said the internal slot will be enabled this summer, which given we are almost in May is just around the corner. I can imagine a concern for Sony is inadvertently saying a drive is good, only for some future PS5 title to really push the drive in some weird way for the the game to have issues. If I bought a drive that Sony said was good, then found Horizon Forbidden West stuttered like crap, I'd be annoyed. I'd rather wait and be sure their qualification process is solid.
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Gotta be looking more into write speed I suspect. I think PS5 supports native 4K output on recording. Wondering if there is a feature coming that just lets your write indefinitely long to an external drive.
 
iroboto said:
Gotta be looking more into write speed I suspect. I think PS5 supports native 4K output on recording. Wondering if there is a feature coming that just lets your write indefinitely long to an external drive.
Click to expand...
Yeah, could be. PS5 is a product Sony likely have a tech/feature roadmap with a horizon of - at minimum - two years so it's not just about what an external drive can do now vis-a-vis comparisons with the internal drive but what Sony may want to do in the future.

I get people's curiosity and frustration but anybody expecting Sony to clarify the situation is naive. Personally I subscribe to the theory that Sony do these things just to torture London Geezer and I am good with that. :yes:
 
goonergaz said:
lol, well you can use external drives - let's say 'limited' choice...but it's short term pain for long term gain
Click to expand...

Is it a gain though? If the currently fastest drives are still not fast enough, will the next round of high speed drives be any cheaper than the already available XBS expansion drives? I mean if it takes until 3-4 years after launch for drives qualified to run in PS5 to be the same or cheaper than existing XBS expansion drives (assuming they don't go down in price), was the wait worth it?

Also, depending on the person, virtually unlimited storage via hot swapping expansion cards might be worth the relatively fixed storage (without powering down the console and taking off the shell to replace the drive) of using 3rd party NVME drives. /shrug. They both obviously have their pros and cons and one isn't necessarily better than the other. However, one is currently available with no potential future "gotchas" if a 3rd party drive doesn't operate quickly enough in some future as yet untested by Sony game.

After all the XBS expansion drive is identical to the internal SSD, while a 3rd party drive used in a PS5 may or may not offer enough speed in all future games due to the relatively massive differences in implementation. This isn't a relatively simple and predictable speed variation as we've had with HDDs in previous gen. consoles where the PS4 used a bog standard HDD and you replaced it with another bog standard HDD. The PS5 has an exotic SSD solution and we're hoping that some bog standard NVME drive will be able to match it in all areas WRT game performance when they are architected so differently.

This is actually one case where gamer's likely would have been better off with Sony either [1] providing official expansion drives or [2] licensing their SSD implementation detail to drive makers so they could release a drive that's at least somewhat similar to the SSD in the PS5.

I hope that once Sony enables the expansion slot for end user use, that no-one will have any problems with it in a future game. But there's always the potential that there is some corner case that Sony hasn't tested (assuming they test individual drive products for suitability) that might cause problems in future games.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Is it a gain though? If the currently fastest drives are still not fast enough, will the next round of high speed drives be any cheaper than the already available XBS expansion drives? I mean if it takes until 3-4 years after launch for drives qualified to run in PS5 to be the same or cheaper than existing XBS expansion drives (assuming they don't go down in price), was the wait worth it?
Click to expand...

It's not known if today's fastest drives are (or aren't) fast enough or if Sony just have more testing to do. In terms of cost, newer/faster tech is generally more expensive than established/older/slower tech - there's a curve for this which tends to look like a U over time. It's expensive when new, then gets cheap when it's in mass production and in high demand, then spikes again when there it's niche and in low demand.

Sony will have a good feel for the cost of high bandwidth solid state storage media over time because they're banked a chunk of PS5's tech on this and this is undoubtedly one of the areas they are expecting to drop like a stone for cost reducing needs.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Is it a gain though? If the currently fastest drives are still not fast enough, will the next round of high speed drives be any cheaper than the already available XBS expansion drives? I mean if it takes until 3-4 years after launch for drives qualified to run in PS5 to be the same or cheaper than existing XBS expansion drives (assuming they don't go down in price), was the wait worth it?

Also, depending on the person, virtually unlimited storage via hot swapping expansion cards might be worth the relatively fixed storage (without powering down the console and taking off the shell to replace the drive) of using 3rd party NVME drives. /shrug. They both obviously have their pros and cons and one isn't necessarily better than the other. However, one is currently available with no potential future "gotchas" if a 3rd party drive doesn't operate quickly enough in some future as yet untested by Sony game.

After all the XBS expansion drive is identical to the internal SSD, while a 3rd party drive used in a PS5 may or may not offer enough speed in all future games due to the relatively massive differences in implementation. This isn't a relatively simple and predictable speed variation as we've had with HDDs in previous gen. consoles where the PS4 used a bog standard HDD and you replaced it with another bog standard HDD. The PS5 has an exotic SSD solution and we're hoping that some bog standard NVME drive will be able to match it in all areas WRT game performance when they are architected so differently.

This is actually one case where gamer's likely would have been better off with Sony either [1] providing official expansion drives or [2] licensing their SSD implementation detail to drive makers so they could release a drive that's at least somewhat similar to the SSD in the PS5.

I hope that once Sony enables the expansion slot for end user use, that no-one will have any problems with it in a future game. But there's always the potential that there is some corner case that Sony hasn't tested (assuming they test individual drive products for suitability) that might cause problems in future games.

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...
Ultimately we won't know but 99% of the time the solution of allowing non proprietary components ends up winning out for the consumer. I agree with the concerns but I think that's why Sony want to have a whitelist, at least that way if there are problems then Sony can be blamed...so in a way it's good that Sony are inserting some control.

I think Sony definitely expected drives 'good enough' to be ready 'near launch' so whilst it's not ideal, they should be coming sooner rather than later. Again, if not Sony missed a massive pot of gold opportunity.

I totally agree it's not ideal now but I am confident it will work out. We know that proprietary products are significantly over priced against their common parts and almost never decrease in value inline with said components, I bought a 980pro off Amazon for £160 the other day and that released with a similar RRP to the Xbox 1TB drive.
 
Maybe the rumored PS5 Pro will just be a PS5 Pro Storage (PS5PS), a model with mo’ storage a la cell phones. Maybe the snap-on BD models will be a $400 1TB and a $500 2TB, both BD-free.
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Huge benefit to Sony users. Surely though a weaker payoff for Sony versus MS where MS is making Phat Profits on its proprietary drive?
Click to expand...
I don't know what official Xbox branding is worth to Microsoft (I presume Seagate pay them) but given what Seagate are charging for their drives they are undoubtably raking it in. For what Seagate charge for the official Xbox 1Tb expansion, is about 80% of what I would pay for a 4Tb M2 drive compatible with PS5.

Interestingly, and something I only discovered recently from an LTT video, the Xbox Series X has a short (30mm) M.2 drive slot internally but the firmware is locked to support specific drive models. 30mm M2 drives are pretty damn rare as 42mm, 60mm and 80mm are the standard M2 stick lengths.
 
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The XB situation is a somewhat bizarre role-reversal! MS aren't even pushing a proprietary format unlike Sony's historical overpriced efforts. I don't know how far under RRP MS prices get though.
 
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