PlayStation 5 Will Greatly Enhance Data Loading & Unloading During Gameplay, Says Dev

In April, Sony Interactive Entertainment Lead Architect Mark Cerny shared in his interview that the loading time of PlayStation 5 will be 19 times faster than PlayStation 4. From that interview, we have learned that Sony’s next-generation gaming console will have an 8-core AMD Zen 2 processor, a Solid State Drive (SSD), and ray tracing. Speaking to Gaming Bolt, Mass Creations shared more details about the improvements that the PlayStation 5 could offer for loading times.

Several game developers have previously shared how the solid-state drive of the PlayStation 5 helps them in designing and creating their games with little to zero restrictions. Others claimed that it aids the game to have faster loading times. But, it seems that there is more to these claims, and we recently learned it from Mass Creation Game Director Grzegorz Kurek and game Design Andrzej Sugier.

Mass Creation is a gaming studio currently working on “Shing!,” which is a 2.5D action game slated to arrive on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC in 2020. With standard drives, there is only so much data that you can stream. “Shing!” is in 2.5D, and the levels almost instantly load and unload, making culling objects that are out of view a very easy task, according to Mass Creation.

However, when loading and unloading data during gameplay, Mass Creation admitted that this is the process where they need to be extra careful. The team expressed that they would like to avoid stuttering when the game is streaming, which is usually due to heavier objects or enemies. With the SSD, this issue is becoming less of a problem, according to Mass Creations.

But, there is more to it than just inserting an SSD in the gaming console, and although it will not be an issue with the solid-state drive, the problem is with the consoles, Mass Creation noted. The issue here is how the consoles handle the data moving to and fro the drive. This is also the reason why switching to a solid-state drive on Xbox or PS4 does not really affect the loading times as much as it is anticipated.

This kind of process will be improved on newer gaming consoles; hence, we can anticipate greater improvements in loading times from them. From the game developer’s statement, we can safely assume that it is referring to the SSD of PlayStation 5.