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PS5 doesn't let you store PS5 games on external HDD

MastaKiiLA

Member
So many defenders of this shitty news

I dont think this is going to affect a small percentage of people....i think its going to affect a large percentage particularly with people who share consoles with other users and ones that are currently playing the cross gen games and getting the new updates
and then you start getting into the games that are coming like cyberpunk which is also going to be on most people ps5s....that 600gig drive is not going to cut it

the main pain point is that sony have hid behind a NDA and drop this shit 1 week out from launch among other things not disclosed.

Many people don't just sit down and play one game from start to finish...they bounce between titles depending on mood/friends or curiosity and with space being limited i am scratching my head as to how they could overlook a simple function which their competition has and some previous generations have also had this function

The PS5 main point is having super fast storage buts its left out this basic functionality that interacts with this
hopefully this is patched rather quickly
Your points are valid, but it's a timing issue. When does this become an issue for any significant number of gamers? Gamers aren't throwing their PS4s in the box. Launch attach rates are never that high. A few games per console, at most. This would account for users who share consoles. Also, gaming habits vary from person to person. I'm not sure any playtime stats for Playstations support the hopping from game to game that you suggest. I personally don't play more than a few games per session, but I wouldn't assume the same for everyone.

Sony would have that kind of information, at least for consoles that are networked. They'd also be aware of attach rates for launch games, and would have weighed this when prioritizing this feature. They're more aware of the data requirements for the upcoming library than we are. I don't know this for fact, but if they didn't then their PMs are incredibly sloppy, and their data gathering completely outdated.

For users who want to play PS4 games, you're correct, this would be a painpoint. They would have to either continue playing on their PS4 systems, or get a USB drive to store PS4 games that don't fit on the SSD. Inconvenient? Yes. Deal breaking? I'm willing to take a bet that it's not, and I'd dare them to not buy the console. What people complain about what they feel strongly enough about to action are often different things. I'd basically break it down like this when setting priority on this:
  • Do a lot of people want this? Yes.
  • Is it worth the expense to develop? Yes.
  • Is it going to sell additional product? No.
  • Is there an alternative solution for this? Yes.
  • Is that alternative solution cumbersome? Yes.
  • Is it a necessity right now (are gamers hitting capacity)? No.
  • Can users live with that alternate solution a while longer? Yes.

If my dev resources are limited, I would prioritize something like Astro's Playroom ahead of certain UI features, for example. What's going to move the needle more, a free pack-in game or game transfer? The free pack-in. There aren't enough games to make this a higher priority. The few users who will require it have other options, though less desirable. The majority of those affected users will buy the console and fill their drives anyway, because they have early-adopter money to afford an external drive for PS4 games, and I see that they're not cancelling their purchases. I already have them on the hook with a large PS4 library, and if they are that worried about running out of space, then they must really want a bunch of PS5 games too. They're not jumping ship...not in any meaningful numbers. Priority gets dropped behind things like the card system, HDR, performance improvements, and other aspects of the UI.

When you consider that PS4 games can be transferred, but not PS5 games. And they've restricted the external bay for the moment, there seem to be limitations to the number of developers working on this thing. PS4 games can be played externally, PS5 games can't. So prioritizing transfer of those games first makes sense. It provides a solution for users who run out of space. I'm under the impression that they're working on either security aspects of having PS5 games on other drives. The NVME and USB drives both pose a similar concern, the ability for gamers to swap said drives with other consoles, potentially allowing for games to be cloned across multiple devices. The PS4 was hacked. Maybe they're trying to put up a better firewall for the PS5. Just my theory based on deduction. I'm very likely to be wrong, but it would explain some of the decision-making.

First, thank you for replying. I think you take the subject very seriously. Obviously I don't. I'm no game developer either and not console warring too.

From what we've seen last gen, games just went from big to bigger. The reality will be that our option is to get a secondary SSD because let it be PS5 or Series X, yes those SSD are going to fill up fast. Just like MP3 came out years ago. I don't know your age but when MP3 came out it was so much better than commpact disk but yet, our option were 64mb,128mb,256mb, 512...1gb for the richest kid. I had a 64mb and could only put 11 or 12 songs on it depending on lenght.

I think we're here again. A brand new tech, better than what we had but it comes at a cost.

Yes, we'll be downloading and erasing a lot more. The problem is, that the internet quality of some(most) of us, are not that fast. By now, downloading 50gb for me means 1.5 hours. So I can only imagine what 200gb means. I'm certainly not going to get a better internet because it means almost double de cost per month. I think there is an issue. Not a huge one but yeah...

I'll probably end up buying both console, I really never cared about wich one is better because I simply like everything video game related. Believe me, I'm far from console warring.
This was a more reasonable response than I deserved. Re-reading my reply to you, and I come off condescending. You have my apologies for that, and my thanks for being polite. I have to work on my tone when I talk about stuff I do. I don't want to come across as a jerk.
 

Hawk269

Member
While Sony hasn't sanctioned any external NVMe drives yet, has any reviewer tested some of the more high performance ones?
From what I have read, the current firmware for the PS5 has the expansion port that is inside of the PS5 is disabled. So even if you plug a NVME drive into that slot the system ignores/does not recognize it because it is disabled. Hopefully they are able to provide a list of drives in short order.
 
I know, just like they didn't tell us about backward compatibility being better then the Series X in some games:

Richard Leadbetter: "Consider Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It ran unlocked on PS4 Pro, and it utilised checkerboard rendering to hit 1800p, up against Series X delivering the same pixel count using native rendering. The bottom line is that PS5 hits 60 frames per second, while Series X is more of a 50fps to 60fps experience. In this case, Sekiro has an excellent checkerboard solution that's a great match for Xbox's native rendering - but the improvement to performance is noticeable.".

LOL, the only thing Series X has going for it at launch and it is getting beat on that too, what an embarrassment. Sure Sony needs to address the storage issue a little faster but we have not even hit launch yet

Oh no, one game out of over 4000. What an embarrassment.
 

Duchess

Member
I imagine the ability to move the games is a feature that's still being worked on. Sony would be aware there will be a strong demand for it from their customers, so will likely add it in at some point. The need to move it back to the internal SSD before playing would still be there, though.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
Even if that was true (it's not at all), I'd take that over the 'nothing new' XSX machine with zero exclusive any day.

Nobody cares about cold storage of games when buying a console.

It should be patched anyway, probably something linked to security.

Seems like a lot of hand-waving various PS5 deficiencies with "No big deal, oh it will be patched"

When PS5 already has a small SSD, no free cloud saves and no solution to expand storage for PS5 games, why weren't these issues dealt with prior to launch?
 

FrankWza

Member
Seems like a lot of hand-waving various PS5 deficiencies with "No big deal, oh it will be patched"

When PS5 already has a small SSD, no free cloud saves and no solution to expand storage for PS5 games, why weren't these issues dealt with prior to launch?

uh, here on earth it’s still the 6th day of November. The PS5 launches on the 12th. The only reason this is a concern is that the PS5 has so many launch games toeven possibly install that theoretically,one could fill this up with next generation games. Not every console has this issue. Some are Bc machines until 2022. It’s incredible really, that a system launches with this many must-have games that could take up that much space on an SSD. That’s one of those good problems. You’re going to have to sort that out when you get your PS5.

I’ll paint you a picture:
while some people are trying to decide if:
-they’ll play MM with or without RT.
-Before Demons Souls or after?
-should I play Astro while I decide and test out Dualsense
-Can I finish all these games before Ratchet?
- Should I get Godfall too?

others will think:
-let’s check BC load times and compare.
-let’s go to the PS5 threads and talk about gamepass.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
uh, here on earth it’s still the 6th day of November. The PS5 launches on the 12th. The only reason this is a concern is that the PS5 has so many launch games toeven possibly install that theoretically,one could fill this up with next generation games. Not every console has this issue. Some are Bc machines until 2022. It’s incredible really, that a system launches with this many must-have games that could take up that much space on an SSD. That’s one of those good problems. You’re going to have to sort that out when you get your PS5.

I’ll paint you a picture:
while some people are trying to decide if:
-they’ll play MM with or without RT.
-Before Demons Souls or after?
-should I play Astro while I decide and test out Dualsense
-Can I finish all these games before Ratchet?
- Should I get Godfall too?

others will think:
-let’s check BC load times and compare.
-let’s go to the PS5 threads and talk about gamepass.

Good thing they aren't thinking about playing COD, Valhalla and CP2077 in addition to those games since they won't have room for them.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Damn... And they don't even have "da gaemz" cause non of the biggest publishers came prepared enough to next gen switch... I guess they'll improve in the future, but in the short run, if you don't care about Sony exclusives enough, Xbox S|X looks like a much more decent option, specially for playing those games on the backlog left from PS4/Xbone gen and be already prepared for the next one.

Can't believe they made XSS storage look much more decent in comparison...
 
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FrankWza

Member
Good thing they aren't thinking about playing COD, Valhalla and CP2077 in addition to those games since they won't have room for them.

If you want to play those games at their best you get a pc. You wanna play exclusives you need a PS5 or a switch. Simple. Only one console is redundant. The poor mans pc. Sorry about that.
Remember this week:
while some people are trying to decide if:
-they’ll play MM with or without RT.
-Before Demons Souls or after?
-should I play Astro while I decide and test out Dualsense
-Can I finish all these games before Ratchet?
- Should I get Godfall too?

others will think:
-let’s check BC load times and compare.
-let’s go to the PS5 threads and talk about gamepass.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
If you want to play those games at their best you get a pc. You wanna play exclusives you need a PS5 or a switch. Simple. Only one console is redundant. The poor mans pc. Sorry about that.
Remember this week:
while some people are trying to decide if:
-they’ll play MM with or without RT.
-Before Demons Souls or after?
-should I play Astro while I decide and test out Dualsense
-Can I finish all these games before Ratchet?
- Should I get Godfall too?

others will think:
-let’s check BC load times and compare.
-let’s go to the PS5 threads and talk about gamepass.

What's redundant is you repeating your irrelevant post in an effort to distract and misdirect from the actual issue in the OP.
 

BuntesFeuer

Neo Member
If you want to play those games at their best you get a pc. You wanna play exclusives you need a PS5 or a switch. Simple. Only one console is redundant. The poor mans pc. Sorry about that.
Remember this week:
while some people are trying to decide if:
-they’ll play MM with or without RT.
-Before Demons Souls or after?
-should I play Astro while I decide and test out Dualsense
-Can I finish all these games before Ratchet?
- Should I get Godfall too?

others will think:
-let’s check BC load times and compare.
-let’s go to the PS5 threads and talk about gamepass.
I think i will just enjoy playing games on whichever console i prefer on whatever particulate time of the day....
 
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Ceadeus

Member
Your points are valid, but it's a timing issue. When does this become an issue for any significant number of gamers? Gamers aren't throwing their PS4s in the box. Launch attach rates are never that high. A few games per console, at most. This would account for users who share consoles. Also, gaming habits vary from person to person. I'm not sure any playtime stats for Playstations support the hopping from game to game that you suggest. I personally don't play more than a few games per session, but I wouldn't assume the same for everyone.

Sony would have that kind of information, at least for consoles that are networked. They'd also be aware of attach rates for launch games, and would have weighed this when prioritizing this feature. They're more aware of the data requirements for the upcoming library than we are. I don't know this for fact, but if they didn't then their PMs are incredibly sloppy, and their data gathering completely outdated.

For users who want to play PS4 games, you're correct, this would be a painpoint. They would have to either continue playing on their PS4 systems, or get a USB drive to store PS4 games that don't fit on the SSD. Inconvenient? Yes. Deal breaking? I'm willing to take a bet that it's not, and I'd dare them to not buy the console. What people complain about what they feel strongly enough about to action are often different things. I'd basically break it down like this when setting priority on this:
  • Do a lot of people want this? Yes.
  • Is it worth the expense to develop? Yes.
  • Is it going to sell additional product? No.
  • Is there an alternative solution for this? Yes.
  • Is that alternative solution cumbersome? Yes.
  • Is it a necessity right now (are gamers hitting capacity)? No.
  • Can users live with that alternate solution a while longer? Yes.

If my dev resources are limited, I would prioritize something like Astro's Playroom ahead of certain UI features, for example. What's going to move the needle more, a free pack-in game or game transfer? The free pack-in. There aren't enough games to make this a higher priority. The few users who will require it have other options, though less desirable. The majority of those affected users will buy the console and fill their drives anyway, because they have early-adopter money to afford an external drive for PS4 games, and I see that they're not cancelling their purchases. I already have them on the hook with a large PS4 library, and if they are that worried about running out of space, then they must really want a bunch of PS5 games too. They're not jumping ship...not in any meaningful numbers. Priority gets dropped behind things like the card system, HDR, performance improvements, and other aspects of the UI.

When you consider that PS4 games can be transferred, but not PS5 games. And they've restricted the external bay for the moment, there seem to be limitations to the number of developers working on this thing. PS4 games can be played externally, PS5 games can't. So prioritizing transfer of those games first makes sense. It provides a solution for users who run out of space. I'm under the impression that they're working on either security aspects of having PS5 games on other drives. The NVME and USB drives both pose a similar concern, the ability for gamers to swap said drives with other consoles, potentially allowing for games to be cloned across multiple devices. The PS4 was hacked. Maybe they're trying to put up a better firewall for the PS5. Just my theory based on deduction. I'm very likely to be wrong, but it would explain some of the decision-making.


This was a more reasonable response than I deserved. Re-reading my reply to you, and I come off condescending. You have my apologies for that, and my thanks for being polite. I have to work on my tone when I talk about stuff I do. I don't want to come across as a jerk.

It's all good , no worry
 
Why have external support for PS5 games when Sony hasn't given us a list of SSDs that will work with the PS5? It's just asking for more complaints when things don't work properly.

Boy, I can't wait for sales to start rolling in. After a few months, maybe a year, it'll be a repeat of this past gen. Xbox fans talking big, with tons of concern for a product they'll never buy, only to slink away one by one when their console gets outsold 2:1, maybe more, consistently. "Why didn't our FUD work this time?"
 
Why have external support for PS5 games when Sony hasn't given us a list of SSDs that will work with the PS5? It's just asking for more complaints when things don't work properly.

Boy, I can't wait for sales to start rolling in. After a few months, maybe a year, it'll be a repeat of this past gen. Xbox fans talking big, with tons of concern for a product they'll never buy, only to slink away one by one when their console gets outsold 2:1, maybe more, consistently. "Why didn't our FUD work this time?"

PS5 Biden Xbox Trump?
 

vkbest

Member
PS4 got external hdd support in the second half in its console cycle. I’m sure ps5 will get it much sooner.

PS5 have external support for PS4, not supporting PS5 games is a decision from Sony, probably because security concerns. I don’t think they will implement this unless people begin to make racket or they are sure the system will not be compromised
 
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FrankWza

Member
What's redundant is you repeating your irrelevant post in an effort to distract and misdirect from the actual issue in the OP.
Not at all. There is no issue. This is where the focus should be. Want to know why? I’m gonna tell you a secret. It’s only for people that buy a PS5 though.


NEKST GEN is here with nekst gen eksclusives.

For everyone else, there’s nothing else to discuss or do.
 
I know, just like they didn't tell us about backward compatibility being better then the Series X in some games:

Richard Leadbetter: "Consider Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It ran unlocked on PS4 Pro, and it utilised checkerboard rendering to hit 1800p, up against Series X delivering the same pixel count using native rendering. The bottom line is that PS5 hits 60 frames per second, while Series X is more of a 50fps to 60fps experience. In this case, Sekiro has an excellent checkerboard solution that's a great match for Xbox's native rendering - but the improvement to performance is noticeable.".

LOL, the only thing Series X has going for it at launch and it is getting beat on that too, what an embarrassment. Sure Sony needs to address the storage issue a little faster but we have not even hit launch yet

Beating how though? Having a few frames more?
Meanwhile Xbox version has:

- Auto-HDR
- 16x AF
- Quick Resume
- much higher resolution

I know which one I will prefer.
 

FrankWza

Member
I think i will just enjoy playing games on whichever console i prefer on whatever particulate time of the day....

absolutely, enjoy! But you can enjoy anything from x on a pc if you really want to maximize your experience. For exclusives, you need aPS5 or switch
 

UnNamed

Banned
Isn't this impediment tied to the drive speed? I remember they said you can use external storage with PS4 games but you need a (not yet available) fast drive for PS5.
 

TLZ

Banned
Beating how though? Having a few frames more?
Meanwhile Xbox version has:

- Auto-HDR
- 16x AF
- Quick Resume
- much higher resolution

I know which one I will prefer.

giphy.gif
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Why have external support for PS5 games when Sony hasn't given us a list of SSDs that will work with the PS5? It's just asking for more complaints when things don't work properly.

Boy, I can't wait for sales to start rolling in. After a few months, maybe a year, it'll be a repeat of this past gen. Xbox fans talking big, with tons of concern for a product they'll never buy, only to slink away one by one when their console gets outsold 2:1, maybe more, consistently. "Why didn't our FUD work this time?"
Sony should allow people to put PS5 games in cold storage on external drives because they don't have any other options for managing PS5 games in internal storage. People aren't asking to play PS5 games from external storage. They just want a way to manage their games without having to delete and re-download and there is no timeline for a solution.

It's not Xbox fanboy FUD. Lack of space is a real problem that people will face if Sony doesn't do something about this quickly. Not everything is playground console war nonsense like you're making it out to be.
 

thelastword

Banned
This was known a long time ago. Sony explicitly said "You can't play PS5 games on the External USB HDD", why would they allow you to transfer these games to the external HDD, when you can't play them there. Besides, putting a bigger SSD in your PS5 is coming and of course download speeds on the PS5 is like 10x that of the PS4......
 

Krisprolls

Banned
Damn... And they don't even have "da gaemz" cause non of the biggest publishers came prepared enough to next gen switch... I guess they'll improve in the future, but in the short run, if you don't care about Sony exclusives enough, Xbox S|X looks like a much more decent option, specially for playing those games on the backlog left from PS4/Xbone gen and be already prepared for the next one.

Can't believe they made XSS storage look much more decent in comparison...

Nobody cares about storage when buying a console. People care about games.

The day MS understands you can't launch a console without a single exclusive, Sony may have a competitor.

Until then, Sony could release a 200 Gb console and people would still choose it over any Xbox, like sales numbers show.
 
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Jigga117

Member
Decisions like this is why I'm going back to discs
? Where have you been? PC, last gen and this gen doesn’t make a difference you still have to install the whole damn game onto the HDD/SSD. The disc is simply a plastic license key to allow you to play it
 
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Moogle11

Banned
This was known a long time ago. Sony explicitly said "You can't play PS5 games on the External USB HDD", why would they allow you to transfer these games to the external HDD, when you can't play them there. Besides, putting a bigger SSD in your PS5 is coming and of course download speeds on the PS5 is like 10x that of the PS4......

Bummer for people like me with only one ISP option and stuck with a data cap that makes deleting and redownloading less than ideal.

That said, I imagine they’ll patch in being able to store PS5 games on an external and copy back over to the SSD to play eventually. You can do that on XSX even though you can’t play those games from the external there either.

In the meantime I’ll just buy disc versions for even games I don’t want to beat and sals so I can at least redownloading the base game file when I need to free up space but want to play again later on.

? Where have you been? PC, last gen and this gen doesn’t make a difference you still have to install the whole damn game onto the HDD/SSD. The disc is simply a plastic license key to allow you to play it

They probably are getting at what I did above. Deleting and redownloading as needed for space constraints sucks for people with datacaps and/or slower Internet where downloads take a while. Having the disc just means reinstalling from it and then redownloading any updates.
 
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Why have external support for PS5 games when Sony hasn't given us a list of SSDs that will work with the PS5? It's just asking for more complaints when things don't work properly.

Boy, I can't wait for sales to start rolling in. After a few months, maybe a year, it'll be a repeat of this past gen. Xbox fans talking big, with tons of concern for a product they'll never buy, only to slink away one by one when their console gets outsold 2:1, maybe more, consistently. "Why didn't our FUD work this time?"

They should and probably will at some point allow external storage for PS5 games, Xbox allows it and an internal expansion is going to be prohibitively expensive for a long time. You can get an 500TB external HDD for $110, that's 5 times the storage for half the price of a 1TB expansion SSD that'll fit in the console (or MS's proprietary solution) they also offer a digital model with no disc drive this time around which they didn't do last time, that makes adding affordable storage a must.
 

Myths

Member
No reason to pick one up at launch until more games get released after. Probably going into Spring 2021 even. For those following this same sentiment, it’s not that big a concern for them.
 

Jigga117

Member
Bummer for people like me with only one ISP option and stuck with a data cap that makes deleting and redownloading less than ideal.

That said, I imagine they’ll patch in being able to store PS5 games on an external and copy back over to the SSD to play eventually. You can do that on XSX even though you can’t play those games from the external there either.

In the meantime I’ll just buy disc versions for even games I don’t want to beat and sals so I can at least redownloading the base game file when I need to free up space but want to play again later on.



They probably are getting at what I did above. Deleting and redownloading as need for space constraints sucks for people with datacaps and/or slower Internet where downloads take a while. Having the disc just means reinstalling from it and then redownloading any updates.
Which is dumb that Sony didn’t allow simple storage capability. MS did it right and it is common sense. This is just backwards and sad they NDA’d it his before launch.
 
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Black ops with warzone would most definitely be 200+ gigs add in mw and that's another 200
There goes like 60 percent of ur storage.
Stop defending companies with their bullshit
600 gigs is just not enough
 

RCU005

Member
It seems like the PS5 UI is also starting from zero again. I don't get why Sony doesn't keep features from past consoles from the start. There's also no folders again, so I suspect we will have to feature-beg all over again for many years.
 

kingwingin

Member
? Where have you been? PC, last gen and this gen doesn’t make a difference you still have to install the whole damn game onto the HDD/SSD. The disc is simply a plastic license key to allow you to play it
Bad news, games on discs now are just installed to the SSD off the disc. The disc isn't even used after that other than you still have to put it in the console every time you play that game.
Yes I know. I'd just rather install from a disc than download a 50+gb file
 

vkbest

Member
Why would it. You have to play ps5 games from their ssd

This was known a long time ago. Sony explicitly said "You can't play PS5 games on the External USB HDD", why would they allow you to transfer these games to the external HDD, when you can't play them there. Besides, putting a bigger SSD in your PS5 is coming and of course download speeds on the PS5 is like 10x that of the PS4......

Because move 50gb from my external hard Drive are 20 minutes, but downloading several hours? What about if you have a problem with your internet? You cant download anything
 
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