News Drama IGN: PS5 games can be stored on an external HDD but need to be copied back to the SSD to play (Update: Currently you can not.)

[Jose92]

PlayStation 5 Review - IGN

What the PS5 lacks in subtlety it makes up for in potential thanks to its rapid SSD and remarkable DualSense controller.

www.ign.com

PS5 games can be stored on an external HDD but need to be copied back to the SSD to play, though the near-instantaneous loading times for PS5 games make this palatable.

In another news gamespot jumped the gun


edit:
Seems to be some outlets are reporting so even though on the box it says you can. Could be missing, due to running a pre release firmware?

Seems to be that you can not do it at the moment

 

[vkbest]

This is ok, for me. The tweet for (don’t remember the guy) was suggesting you couldn’t transfer a PS5 game

 

[Moogle11]

Fine by me. If part of the upgrade is the SSD and fast loading times. I wouldn’t want to play games of the external anyway. But being able to move back and forth is good to avoid having to delete and later redownload things since we have a data cap.

 

[danielJackson]

We knew this monts ago, so it not news.

If anybody thought they could just play ps5 games from slow ass hdd, then it is their fault.

But this is actually great feature, no need to reinstall/download ps5 games all the time, just add cheap +1tb hdd for storing

 

[cHaOs667]

TBH, that the SSD is not swappable at start is one of the worst decision by Sony. With the size of games like CoD: Cold War the SSD is way too small.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Interesting that Polygon say you can't!

"If you were hoping to be able to use a large external hard drive as “cold storage” for PS5 games — i.e., clearing space on the internal SSD by moving installed games to a USB HDD, rather than deleting them and having to re-download them later — that’s unfortunately not an option. "

Gamespot also saying you can't.
Someone has got the wrong end of the stick here.

 

[ethomaz]

Cerny said so in March.

 

[Iced Arcade]

Yeah this was known long ago.

 

[splattered]

We can at least play PS4 games directly off an external though right? I have a 4TB full of games right now i want to move over..

 

[IShowUBasics]

Thats an obvious thing? If games are developed for an SSD they can obviously not run on a HDD. Who thought that would work for PS5 games? The only games you can run off the HDD are PS4 titles.

 

[Moogle11]

We can at least play PS4 games directly off an external though right? I have a 4TB full of games right now i want to move over..

Yep. Can just plug that in and play right from it.

 

[Rikkori]

Here's the discrepancy: You can store PS4 games on the external drive and play from there, but you CANNOT transfer & store PS5 games on an external drive for either cold storage or playing (but the playing part we expected not to work because Sony said it didn't).

 

[splattered]

Yep. Can just plug that in and play right from it.

Thank god

 

[Entroyp]

What is gamespot smoking?

Edit: so gamespot was right?

 

[Phrixotrichus]

edit: misread

 

[WelshBluebird]

Here's the discrepancy: You can store PS4 games on the external drive and play from there, but you CANNOT transfer & store PS5 games on an external drive for either cold storage or playing (but the playing part we expected not to work because Sony said it didn't).

But in the link posted here, IGN are saying specifically you can copy and store PS5 games on external drives - you just can't play them from there.
So who is right?

 

[Rikkori]

But in the link posted here, IGN are saying specifically you can copy and store PS5 games on external drives - you just can't play them from there.
So who is right?

IGN is always wrong.

You can see Press Start AU, Push Square and many others are saying it's not possible. Only IGN is saying the opposite.

 

[Sethbacca]

So is there any info about speed of loading off USB-C external SSDs for PS4 titles in any of the reviews thus far?

 

[JLB]

This was my biggest concern for both consoles. This is expected, yes, but a painful drawback. In my current gen console, every game that is listed is ready to play. Now, eventually I'll need to wait 8-15 mins (or more) to do the transfer. Oh, and if theres no space left, I'd need to delete / move something else to the HD, to move it back if I want to play that game again.
Not a deal breaker, but a shit.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

No shit, Sherlock

 

[Bittermich]

This was my biggest concern for both consoles. This is expected, yes, but a painful drawback. In my current gen console, every game that is listed is ready to play. Now, eventually I'll need to wait 8-15 mins (or more) to do the transfer. Oh, and if theres no space left, I'd need to delete / move something else to the HD, to move it back if I want to play that game again.
Not a deal breaker, but a shit.

you can copy and move games from external HDD to the internal SSD on Xbox Series Consoles. Its confirmed and It’s pretty quick too. You just need an external USB 3.0 HDD or SSD.
Also, you can expanded the fast SSD Storage at launch on Xbox. Can’t do that on PS5 right now.

 

[JLB]

you can copy and move games from external HDD to the internal SSD on Xbox Series Consoles. Its confirmed and It’s pretty quick too. You just need an external USB 3.0 HDD or SSD.
Also, you can expanded the fast SSD Storage at launch on Xbox. Can’t do that on PS5 right now.

Oh, well then its even worst on PS5.
I mean, its not ideal on Series X/S, but not able to even copy the game on an external is terrible.

 

[KingdomHeartsFan]

What I wanna know is how long it takes to transfer a regular 50GB game back and forth.

 

[Aceofspades]

Well.. of course

 

[SilentUser]

Nothing new, that was revealed by Sony way back then. You can only play PS5 games on a fast enough SSD and, for now, there is not a single one available. External SSD may never be viable.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Cerny literally said this during the road to PS5

 

[gamechanger87]

IGN is the only one reporting this. All the other outlets say that you can't use it as PS5 cold storage.

DO PS5 GAMES WORK WITH EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVES?
They do not. Even USB SSDs are far, far slower than the PS5’s built-in storage, so all PS5 games must be installed to the console’s internal SSD.

If you were hoping to be able to use a large external hard drive as “cold storage” for PS5 games — i.e., clearing space on the internal SSD by moving installed games to a USB HDD, rather than deleting them and having to re-download them later — that’s unfortunately not an option. (This is presumably because Sony doesn’t want to confuse people who might expect that if they could move a PS5 game to an external drive, they’d also be able to play it off of that drive.) In fact, the PS5 doesn’t even let you copy PS5 save files to a USB drive; the only backup option is cloud storage, which is available exclusively for PlayStation Plus subscribers.

Anything goes for PS4 games, though. You can copy them from a PS4 to a PS5 using Sony’s built-in data transfer feature, and/or put them on a USB 3.0 drive that you plug in to the PS5. You can play PS4 games directly from USB storage to get some performance improvements, or move them to the PS5’s internal SSD to take advantage of upgrades like further reductions in loading times.

 

[Bladed Thesis]

Currently you cannot transfer PS5 saved games to external harddrives but I'm sure they are working on an update for it.


Seeing how we've got a little more than a week until release, I think we'll see an update for this before everybody gets their hands on their console.

 

[Entroyp]

Currently you cannot transfer PS5 saved games to external harddrives but I'm sure they are working on an update for it.


Seeing how we've got a little more than a week until release, I think we'll see an update for this before everybody gets their hands on their console.

Why would a Polygon editor be working on a PS OS update?

 

[gamechanger87]

Currently you cannot transfer PS5 saved games to external harddrives but I'm sure they are working on an update for it.


Seeing how we've got a little more than a week until release, I think we'll see an update for this before everybody gets their hands on their console.

It’s been confirmed by a bunch that it’s not here.

That’s a polygon editor not a Sony person.

 

[M1chl]

Why would a Polygon editor be working on a PS OS update?

Update the article about PS5?

 

[mckmas8808]

Interesting that Polygon say you can't!

"If you were hoping to be able to use a large external hard drive as “cold storage” for PS5 games — i.e., clearing space on the internal SSD by moving installed games to a USB HDD, rather than deleting them and having to re-download them later — that’s unfortunately not an option. "

Gamespot also saying you can't.
Someone has got the wrong end of the stick here.

Edited: Looks like an update is being worked on.

 

[Jimmyisback]

HOW CAN POLYGON GET THIS SO WRONG?!?!

Mark Cerny told us we could do this back in March. Did they just not pay attention?

is this mark cerny march thing a meme. I don't get it.

 

[Warnen]

So no cold storage and no ssd to buy...

we’ll just get a line of ps5s for all your games

 

[WelshBluebird]

I wonder if the answer is that you can, but it has to be a PS5 specific drive and not one that was formated with a PS4 containing PS4 games or something like that.

Either way sounds like Polygon are working on an update to their story.

 

[Jimmyisback]

PS5 owners are gonna have to redownload or reinstall your games over and over if you want to keep switching them out due to hard drive space. Gonna suck so bad.

 

[gamechanger87]

Edited: Looks like an update is being worked on.

Where do you see this? A Polygon editor said they are updating their article. It's been confirmed from multiple sources that its not there.

Sony has not confirmed that they are going to update it to make it work.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Where do you see this? A Polygon editor said they are updating their article. It's been confirmed from multiple sources that its not there.

Sony has not confirmed that they are going to update it to make it work.

Polygon were one of the places to say it doesn't work though. If they are right why would they need to update their article? Seems something is weird atm!
Edit - looks like theres some talk about being able to backup the PS5 system as a whole to an external drive - maybe that is what IGN got confused by? Either way seems odd that they would categorically say you can do something that everyone else is saying you can't!

 

[prinz_valium]

You can't do it right now.
It might be available at launch, or it might not.
Probably the latter. It's only 4 more work days.

 

[gamechanger87]

Polygon were one of the places to say it doesn't work though. If they are right why would they need to update their article? Seems something is weird atm!

He posted his update. Its still the same.

You cannot move PS5 games to a USB at all.

All you can do is use a USB as a System Backup/Restore. You can save games to a USB if you want to restore the entire PS5 everytime.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/6/21551875/ps5-save-data-backup-cloud-usb-storage

 

[WelshBluebird]

He posted his update. Its still the same.

You cannot move PS5 games to a USB at all.

All you can do is use a USB as a System Backup/Restore. You can save games to a USB if you want to restore the entire PS5 everytime.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/6/21551875/ps5-save-data-backup-cloud-usb-storage

Maybe that is what IGN were reporting on then?
Sounds pretty different to how they presented it though.
Maybe IGN messing up so badly is the most likely situation here, but still strikes me as odd. I know some sites, including IGN, can be pretty inaccurate sometimes but this seems more odd than usual!

 

[gamechanger87]

IGN is the only one who claims you can. All other outlets are saying no.

I think IGN is very confused and thinking about PS4 games because there is a formal block in the UI preventing it.

The UI shows stuff that can be moved an its only PS4 stuff per Jeff G as well.

 

[Zghia]

Cerny literally said this during the road to PS5

Quoted for the truth

 

[Black_Stride]

IGN continues to be the IGN of games media.

He reviewed the thing without reviewing the thing?

 

[Yselacrey00]

Maybe that is what IGN were reporting on then?
Sounds pretty different to how they presented it though.
Maybe IGN messing up so badly is the most likely situation here, but still strikes me as odd. I know some sites, including IGN, can be pretty inaccurate sometimes but this seems more odd than usual!

Lol, IGN os wrong all the time. The other day, they reported you wouldn't be able to buy a PS5 at launch without a preorder.

 

[Captain Zyrain]

Hopefully the secondary storage solution for the PS5 comes out soon. The 677GB or whatever could fill up fast if it's not out by Spring.

 

[Paulistano]

.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Wait you can't even use an external to temporarily store a game for a "swap" scenario?

Only choice is to delete if full and download again later?

 

[Bittermich]

Wait you can't even use an external to temporarily store a game for a "swap" scenario?

Only choice is to delete if full and download again later?

you can only do this with PS4 titles only. Not PS5 titles.

 

[IntentionalPun]

you can only do this with PS4 titles only. Not PS5 titles.

Ah got it; well at this point a lot of what anyone would have installed would probably be BC games anyways.

This is likely either a security thing, or Sony just isn't ready with the tech to detect where your game lives in order for it not to run if it's on an external.

This could be something that is there very soon.