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The PS5 and Xbox Series consoles represent an astronomical leap in console hardware technology. It’s not just about a bigger graphics chip or a faster CPU. It’s all about that sweet I/O.

In this context, I/O - or rather, the input/output is simply the rate of data transfer between storage and RAM. In the previous PS4 and PS3 generations, consoles used standard mechanical hard drives for storage and game data installation. These mechanical HDDs have data transfer speeds of anywhere between 20-100 MB/s, which is also the speed at which those console’s RAM can be filled. Loading screens in modern games are there so that the HDDs can fully load the levels into RAM. The bigger the game or level, the longer loading will take. 

On a typical HDD, it would take a full minute to fill out the PS4s’ RAM. This also doesn’t take into account the data seek time for hard drives which would make that considerably longer. In stark contrast, the PS5 has double the RAM of the PS4 but because of its much faster storage and I/O – around 5.5 GB/s - the PS5’s RAM can be filled in around 2 seconds - including data seek times. 

The reason for this colossal increase in I/O is because of a simple custom chip that Sony developed specifically for the PS5’s SSD. This special custom controller makes this generation’s console a truly powerful machine in a way that even the most expensive gaming PCs can’t compare to. 

Currently, there are no SSD or NVMe drives on the market that can handle the sustained transfer speeds of the custom SSD inside the PS5 (and to a lesser extent, the Series X and S). Without any such custom I/O controllers on the PC hardware and with Windows software not yet supporting the ultra-high speed data transfers for gaming that’s native in the PS5 OS, this is one instance where custom console hardware design is superior.

So, what does this mean? What if the data transfer rate has increased by 100x? What if RAM is being filled faster? How will that affect your gaming experience? Simply put, game design will change in a huge way. Loading screens in next gen games will be essentially gone. There won’t be a need for you to stop playing your game and stare at a blank screen for minutes at a time while the next area is being loaded into RAM. There won’t be a need for long, empty corridors or elevator rides that are also used to mask loading. Dying in a game won’t cause you to wait needlessly while the level is reloaded for you to try again. Fast travel will finally live up to its name. Even level layouts will change as developers won’t have to worry about players moving too fast through carefully designed maps. Actual development time will be saved as devs will no longer have to spend months optimizing their code to load on slow mechanical drives as efficiently as possible.

The above image is a map of Haven City in the game Jak & Daxter. The apparently random sprawl of buildings, blocks and roads are actually meticulously designed so that players can only move through the city at a certain pace. The city’s layout is specifically designed so that each area has enough time to load before the player can get there. With the ultrafast storage of the nextgen consoles, games and developers will no longer have to deal with such limitations.

The custom flash storage found in both the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles are just one part of what makes those machines truly next generation. While gaming PCs can brute force many things through sheer hardware muscle, you can’t help but admire the finesse with which the weaker consoles use special custom designs to overcome their relatively weaker hardware.

Seeing next generation exclusive games taking full advantage of the hardware of the PS5 and Series X will be a treat indeed.

About the author: Maldivian Gaming League is a team of e-sports organizers and competition promoters based in the Maldives. For more information, check them out on Facebook or Instagram.