UPDATE: After speaking with a Sony rep under the condition of anonymity, it was confirmed that the PS4 will require large installs for all games going forward. When I pressed for more information, I was told that the only fix available now would be to install a bigger hard drive which Sony has said will not void the warranty. The rep did start to talk about a future solution where games could be installed to the cloud and streamed to the system but immediately stopped talking and said she had revealed too much.
Required game installs are nothing new on current gaming consoles, so it’s not surprising that the trend is carrying over to next gen as well. What has taken me aback is the needed hard drive space to get these games running.
As stores are starting to see their inventory of PS4 games come trickling in, a somewhat scary pic of Call of Duty Ghosts has surfaced that hints at what is to come. Take a look.
Yep, I did a second take too — that’s not four point nine, but forty nine gigs of hard drive space that must be dedicated to install and play this game. I checked out the PS4 FAQ, and it seemed to corroborate the need for that much space:
When playing disc-based games on PS4, do I need to install data to the hard drive?
Yes, all PS4 Blu-ray Disc games must be cached to the hard drive to ensure a smooth gaming experience. However, certain titles may not require you to wait for the game data to be fully cached before starting gameplay. In order to start playing disc-based games, users will need to insert the game disc into PS4 just like on the PS3 system.
People who are buying digital games should be slightly more worried as even with the new download architecture of the PS4, they’ll still have to download a good chunk of it first before the game is even ready to play. I don’t care how fast your internet connection is, a download of that size will still take a long time to finish.
As of now, it’s hard to say whether or not this will be the norm or an anomaly, but another launch title, Killzone Shadow Fall is rumored to need at least 37 GB of space to install as well. If this is the trend with PS4 games, then that 500 GB hard drive is gonna fill up awfully fast, and I for one, wasn’t hoping to have to invest in a 1 TB drive upgrade or higher in the first year or so of owning the system.
A good number of us will be picking up the system launch day, so stay tuned for our thoughts and review of the system once we get our grubby little hands on it!