One of the biggest talking points of the PS5 is how it's aiming to virtually eliminate loading times. According to Sony Interactive Entertainment, this will be possible thanks to its advanced SSD. That said, turns out this will be a big marketing point for the Xbox Series X as well, which will have its own cutting-edge SSD that Microsoft says will come close to eradicating loading times all together. Of course, whether this will actually happen for either console, only time will tell, but both seem incredibly confident in the tech and what it means for console gaming.

"It's really about giving the developers the tools and the capabilities to use the hardware in the most efficient way possible," said Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald while speaking to our sister site GameSpot. "A good example of that is on the [solid-state drive] side--we've basically reached the limit of [what's] possible with the traditional rotational drive. We're basically at the upper bounds of the raw performance we can get there. So we've invested in MVME SSDs and we're also giving developers a lot of new capabilities on top of that to try to virtually eliminate load times."

According to Ronald, improvements in loading times will extend across all genres. For example, in a massive open-world game things like fast-travel will be near instant. Meanwhile, for a level-based platformer, dying or going to the next level will be a faster loading experience, if there's any to begin with.

"Those are things that we can do with the platform level to make the gaming experience just better," said Ronald. "It's really about ensuring there's less waiting and more time playing because that's ultimately what we all want to do."

Again, each generation Sony and Microsoft talk about certain aspects of their new consoles and promise realities that are never really realized. As you will know, PC gamers have had builds featuring a SSD for years now, and it hasn't completely gotten rid of loading times. That said, many games are developed with console and PC in mind to begin with, so the tech is often not fully realized. In other words, who knows, maybe the Xbox Series X and PS5 will deliver in this regard, but I'm skeptical.

Xbox Series X is poised to release sometime in holiday 2020.



Posted: Dec 23, 2019 10:17 am
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/12/19/xbox-series-x-feature-loading-times/