The PlayStation 5 has 646.7GB of usable storage out of the box, but SSD storage expansion is “reserved for a future update.”
The PlayStation 5 will launch November 12th in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. For the rest of the world, it will launch November 19th. The PlayStation 5 will cost $499.99 USD, while the Digital Edition will cost $399.99 USD.
Even so, reviewers and others are getting their hands on the system early. While an earlier teardown by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) showed the system had an 825GB SSD, a somewhat large chunk of that is taken up by the operating system.
US Gamer‘s review of the console notes that the PlayStation 5 only has 646.7GB of free space. While that leaves 178.3GB being used, there have been claims the OS takes up 156GB, and Astro’s Playroom (coming pre-loaded on the console) taking 2.4GB.
US Gamer explained further that AAA games would be taking up a sizable chunk of the PlayStation 5 memory.
Overall storage space is an issue on PlayStation 5. Sony’s decision to prioritize speed meant compromising space, with the PS5 offering only 646.7 GB of free space out of the box. That’s small because the games themselves are getting bigger; Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is 133 GB on PS5 and you’re likely to see similar Triple-A titles start to approach 100 GB in the rush to make 4K-ready assets. You can augment your storage with an external hard drive, but any game you install on it won’t benefit from the architecture of the main drive.
While the review makes note of external storage solutions and the console’s own M.2 SSD slot, hopes of supporting the PlayStation 5 with an SSD on launch have been dashed. Sony stated to The Verge that SSD storage expansion is disabled, and “[T]his is reserved for a future update.”
The Verge also notes that during PlayStation hardware architect Mark Cerny’s “The Road to PlayStation 5” presentation. he stated “It’d be great if that [SSD storage expansion] happened by launch, but it’s likely to be a bit past it, so please hold off on getting that M.2 drive until you hear from us.”
The Verge also note the size of several PlayStation 5 titles. These include SackBoy: A Big Adventure (32GB), Spider-Man: Miles Morales (50GB), the Ultimate Launch Edition with Spider-Man Remastered (105GB), Demon’s Souls (66GB) and the aforementioned Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (133GB).
That presentation occurred in March 2020, with Bloomberg reporting numerous claims that Sony were struggling to find parts and meet fluctuating production goals [1, 2, 3, 4]. SIE would later deny these rumors.
Image: US Gamer