Call it installation or call it caching, but the bottom line is that you will have to save large chunks of PlayStation 4 games to the system's hard drive. It's not an option. It's mandatory on Sony's next-gen system. Today, at a stylish waterfront hotel in New York City that's been taken over by Sony for all things PS4, the system's lead architect, Mark Cerny, explained just how these requirements work.
- Why Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download
- Why Are My Ps4 Games Taking So Long To Download
- Why Do Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download
- Why Do Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download Pc
Dec 28, 2015 Usually with game updates and demos it takes FOREVR to download updates. I don't know why. My internet is 20mbps. Doesn't make sense though when I hit download speeds test on PS4. Why does it take so long to install a game onto my computer!? By tcgokhan8. Answer HQ English; Announcements. So I installed the sims 3 on my lap top first and it only took about an hour to download, so then I installed the sims island paradise and then it pops up that the game needs an update so when I go to update it and it says it. Why does my Ps3 take so long to download game updates? The latest Black Ops 2 patch came out today for PS3. It was around 61mb it took me 30mins to download!!!!! On the PS4 pro, is it ok to unplug the hdmi from the tv while the PS4 is on? Reviews says it’s ok to do that, but not unplug the power cord?
Next-Gen Games Will Fill Our New Consoles' Hard Drives In No Time
The PlayStation 4's internal hard drive is 500GB, and if you buy and start playing just two of …
Read more ReadIf you are playing a disc-based game, the system will begin caching the disc when you put it in the console and get ready to play. The game is saving part of itself to the system's hard drive. The amount of data that has to be saved before you can start will vary per title.
Cerny said that for the launch game he directed, Knack, users should only have to wait 10s of seconds to play the game. After that, as you play, the game will stream more content to the console's 500GB hard drive. Knack will use 37GB of space overall, as noted on the game's box. Obviously, it won't take many games to fill the console's hard drive.
Cached/installed game data will stay on the hard drive until the user deletes it. Cerny said that there had been some internal discussions at Sony about having the PS4 auto-delete installed data from games that players hadn't used in a while. They decided against it, figuring that gamers would never want to feel 'blindsided' and would prefer to make their data management decisions manually. Probably a good choice!
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The disc installation is required on PS4 because the console is not designed to read games off of discs. It's not a PlayStation issue. It's a physics issue. The machine may have a Blu-Ray drive that's about three times faster than the PS3 and sixteen times as much memory, but it's still more expedient for the PS4 to read data from its own hard drive. Cerny said his team had heard too many complaints from current-gen developers about having to wait to load in new levels of games. Putting the data on the readily-accessible hard drive alleviates that.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft's Xbox One requires installation from Blu-Ray, too, and only runs games off the hard drive.
If a PS4 user decides to download a game, they will have to wait longer to play. Cerny couldn't provide as narrow an estimate on how long a player who decided to download Knack would have to wait. That depends in large part on a user's Internet connection speed. Ideally, he said, they wouldn't have to wait more than an hour before beginning to play the partially downloaded games. Other games may be set up differently, allowing users to start playing them sooner or requiring them to wait longer. With these kinds of download speeds and requirements, players may want to queue their PS4 downloads long before they want to start gaming or download in the background while doing something else. Or just drive to the store and get a disc.
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We'll have much more about the PS4 in the coming days as well as a review of the system at 9am ET, on Wednesday, November 13.
To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.
Why Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download
Microsoft has given some small insight as to why games take longer to install compared to the PS4 system.
Why Are My Ps4 Games Taking So Long To Download
As a owner of both consoles, I do notice that games install much faster on the PS4 than they do on the Xbox One. There are some exceptions, but the general consensus is that the PS4 is faster in that department. The only games I know that are slow on both consoles were NBA 2K14 and 2K15. Both games required around 50GB which is why they took so long.
Why Do Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download
Xbox Head Phil Spencer talked more about the installation times for the Xbox One during a podcast with IGN. One of the reasons why early games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Forza Motorsport 5 took some time to install was because the Xbox One was designed to be always-online. Spencer said once they removed the always-online aspect, “flow of the installation code is not as flawless as it could be“. He even had a team of his own people to investigate the install times of the Xbox One compared to the PS4. He said some gamers are faster to install on PS4, while others are “significantly worse.”
Why Do Ps4 Games Take So Long To Download Pc
He says the slower install times should not be blamed on Xbox One’s Blu-ray drive or hard drive however. This is because they have similar specifications to the PS4. He actually admitted he’s not sure why Xbox One installs games slower than PS4, but agrees it’s a problem to address. He and his team want to find out what the problem is and will hopefully make installations faster in the future.