Much has been made of the hardware advantage that Xbox Series X seems to enjoy over the PS5, but that doesn't mean the PS5 isn't an incredibly powerful system in its own right, and perhaps strong enough to give gaming PCs a run for their money.
One feature, in particular, sets the PS5 apart, according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who said at a recent press conference, "The storage architecture on the PS5 is far ahead of anything you can buy on the PC for any amount of money right now."
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While Sony's deep dive on the PS5 back in March was nearly sleep-inducing, the one thing that did come through loud and clear was that the company thought that its SSD and data management were a transformational aspect of the console. It seems that developers may back that claim up.
At the time there were questions about whether developers could easily leverage the hardware to deliver on Sony's promises. Based on what Sweeney is saying, they have absolutely done so. It's the integration of the data management with the incredible speed of the custom SSD that makes it unbeatable by PC manufacturers today. Sweeney says that the PS5 is capable of rendering content that is "tens of gigabytes in size" without a perceptible delay.
Sweeney and his team have spent ample time working with the PS5 already. Lest you feel this is pure speculation on his part, if you haven't already seen the Unreal Engine 5 demo that Epic unveiled this week, it is rendered entirely on a PS5 and gives you some idea of what the hardware is capable of.
Sweeney believes that PC manufacturers will chase what they are seeing from the PS5 when it launches this fall, but naturally, it isn't as easy as simply dropping faster SSDs in. We are going to have to wait a while to find out if he's right about that, but it has perked up our interest in the PS5 hardware again.
Even at launch consoles are typically eclipsed by a high-end gaming PC, it will be an interesting change of pace if this time around Sony really has hit on an advantage that can't easily be matched.
