Hard drives have always been one of the central pillars of PCs and an essential component for playing our favorite video games. His role was so important that they eventually made it to video consolesWithout going any further, the Xbox was the first to have this type of unit at home, and it was later extended to the Xbox 360 and PS3.

For PS4 and Xbox One, hard drives played an even bigger role and installing video games has become essential the ability to play on consoles made the user experience more and more similar to what we would have on PC, which ended up being a big problem that caused many headaches for developers.

To understand this, it is necessary to be clear why we have to install game on storage driveand why it can become a bottleneck. Normally, a game has an approximate average weight between 30 and 90 GB, although there are titles that easily exceed 100 GB.

Due to their weight, it is clear that it is not possible to store this enormous amount of data directly in the RAM of the system, even if it were possible in some cases this type of memory is volatilewhich means that when we shut down the PC the installation disappeared and we would have to do it again.

This is the main reason why it is necessary to use a storage unit like a hard drive because this is non-volatile, and also because it has a capacity that, even in its cheapest versions, is already in the range of 2 TB. With the hard disk, we have enough space and, moreover, we will have the peace of mind that the installation will be permanently maintained.

Hard drives and video games: why have they become a burden?

Now that we understand why it is necessary to install video games on storage units such as hard drives, we have the basis to fully explore why they have become a problem and why video game developers their backs are turned every time.

To give you a more complete idea of ​​the reality we currently live in this sense, I will share with you five keys that explain in a broad and precise way, reasons why hard drives are already one foot in the grave in the video game industry. Its days are numbered and eventually sooner or later we will reach a situation where such a component will be unplayable.

1.-They have very high latency

And this is what he does access times are much slower than what we would have on an SSD drive. This is completely normal, remember that hard drives are mechanical units that use several platters to store data and files, and that these are read via a moving head that has to locate the location of each data or file in each of these platters.

If the data or files you need are found in very remote areas or even on different dishes because there is a serious fragmentation problemthe latency will be enormous and could eventually lead to a number of problems including blockbusters and cases cracking more or less marked. Cracking is the absence of necessary elements and their subsequent sudden and late appearance.

Imagine, for example, driving through Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 and seeing this stage elements appear out of nowhere, pedestrians and vehicles that should have been rendered much earlier. This would be a clear case of cracking, and it’s one of the most common issues with Xbox One and PS4 games released in recent years.

To try to minimize this problem, developers use duplicate data game installations, so they are installed in different areas of the hard drive to make them easier to locate and improve access times. Obviously, it takes up more space unnecessarily.

2.-Its performance is much lower

The difference in performance between SSDs and hard drives is huge. Consider that the PS4 and Xbox One’s storage drive, a 5,400 rpm hard drive, is barely up to average speed 100 MB/swhile the Xbox Series X SSD achieves 2400 MB/sand that’s what the PS5 achieves 5,500 MB/s.

What does it mean when we talk about video games? Well, very simple that the data transfer speed offered by the Xbox Series X storage drive is 240 times faster than the speed of the Xbox One, and that this not only reduces loading times, but also Significantly improved access and loading speed of game assets.

When the game engine is installed on an SSD with such a huge bandwidth, it can load all the elements and data you need in less time. This will reduce loading timeand at the same time, it will improve the user experience because once you get into the game, real-time asset loading will happen at a very high speed, and we will not have problems with tearing or cracking.

Again, we can cite Cyberpunk 2077 as an example. In its version for PS4 and Xbox One, the game not only had problems with cracking and tearing, which was especially evident when changing zones, but also literally stopped for a few seconds because it needed to load data, and the hard drive was unable to do this in real time while manipulating the data needed to move the game. With SSD, there are no load times between zones.

3.-There is no room for optimization

Hard drives have finally peaked, reached a point where It is no longer possible to continue the optimization to make them work a little better in video games. As I told you earlier, developers have used tricks like local data mirroring to improve performance, although this is also a form of de-optimization as games take up more space.

We also noticed a very significant trend towards development corridor games with very small worlds created with fake backgrounds that show places we will never actually get to. These are all tricks to mask the reality, that with hard drives you can’t create video games with large worlds that the user can freely move around, and the classic long-loading transitions between maps is another insurmountable barrier. .

Cyberpunk 2077 is another excellent example, as this title includes an option in the settings that allows this optimize the game to run on your hard drive. This has an explanation, which is that the game was developed to work on the Xbox One and PS4, two consoles that have very slow hard drives, but it was also optimized to work well on an SSD drive, which is what the PS5 and Xbox Series . construction. X-Series S

As much as we want to optimize reality, it’s ultimately inevitable, and in this case, hard drives in the world of video games can’t do more. For all their flaws, they have become a huge bottleneck and there is no room for optimization. So much so that Cyberpunk 2077 itself will become one of the first games to stop supporting this type of storage units.

It doesn’t mean it won’t be playable on the HDD anymore, but it does the performance of this will be insufficient and that the gaming experience could end up being significantly affected either way performance issues or for errors of greater or lesser severity.

4.-SSDs have been standardized

And they have done it to such an extent that today it is almost impossible to buy a PC or laptop equipped with a hard drive. This should also be taken into account the price of SSD drives has dropped dramatically in recent years and that today it is possible to get models with a capacity of 1 TB and a good level of performance from 50 euros.

SSDs have become pretty standard in the mainstream consumer market They did it in the world of video consoles tooa topic that is also very important and which we will cover in the last point of this article.

Given the price difference that exists today between hard drives and solid state drives, it is clear that it is no longer worth buying HDDs, except for very specific cases that end up being the exception, not the rule. So, for example, a hard drive would make sense primarily as a secondary drive for storing data and files, as well as for backups.

As a main drive today, an SSD is essential because it generally offers a huge improvement over an HDD and at a minimal price difference. We’ve already given you specific performance figures, but aside from MB/s, there’s the issue of latency and access times, which is exactly what we that feeling of complete fluidity and almost immediate openness files and folders when using an SSD.

5.-Consoles said goodbye to hard drives

It’s more important than it seems, and I’ll tell you why. Hard drives continued to gain significant support in the video game world as they were generally developed, based on PS4 and Xbox One hardware. Both consoles use HDDs, so in the end it was necessary to optimize for those.

We are talking about a huge user base since both consoles will be put together 160 million users worldwidewhich represents a very wide spectrum of potential sales that encourages developers to continue to optimize their games to run well on hard drives and to accept the sacrifices that come with it.

With the PS5 and Xbox Series X-Series S came the jump to SSDs, and with that came an automatic “expiry date” on hard drives in the game world. By the time the transition to said consoles is complete and the PS4 and Xbox One are abandoned, developers will build on the hardware base of the current generationand the hard drive is no longer present in it.

Again, this doesn’t mean we won’t be able to install games on hard drives, but it does mean they may not run acceptably on those drives, and they will no longer be optimized to work with such slow storage units. This will happen, if all goes according to plan, from 2024, when the old generation consoles will be almost completely abandoned.