During an interview with Wired last year, lead system architect Mark Cerny hinted that the PlayStation 5’s SSD could allow for reduced game sizes. Its lightning-quick read speeds meant that developers would no longer have to duplicate certain data to evade the limitations of spinning rust, opening up the possibility of smaller installations.
“If you look at a game like Marvel’s Spider-Man, there are some pieces of data duplicated 400 times on the hard drive,” Cerny explained at the time.
Wired had warned that developers would simply fill that space up with something else instead of reducing footprints, and unfortunately, it looks like the publication was right. The install sizes of PlayStation 5’s biggest launch titles have been revealed on PS Direct (Sony’s official hardware and games shop), and they appear to be just as hefty as current-gen titles.
The Launch Edition and Ultimate Edition of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will eat up 50 GB and 105 GB of storage space, respectively, while Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake demands 66 GB. For comparison, the original Spider-Man game costs 53 GB, which is pretty interesting, since Miles Morales is supposed to be only half the length of its predecessor.
Larger game installs are arguably moot because users can simply swap the PS5’s stock 825 GB SSD for a larger one, but prospective owners of the Digital Edition may want to prepare themselves for lengthier downloads. We’re still waiting on Sony to provide a proper tear-down of the console so users can see exactly where – and how – a third-party PCIe SSD is installed.