PS5's lightning-fast load times will make gaming "unrecognisable" says Naughty Dog boss

There's a lot to like about the PS5, from what we've heard of it so far. However, its secret weapon sounds like the solid-state drive, a feature long used by PC gamers accommodating partial game installation, providing room for enormous amounts of data and creating near-instant load times. It's those super-fast load times that might be the key to the PS5's success, as it will open doors never before seen in console gaming. 

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Evan Wells, President of Naughty Dog – the company behind iconic series Uncharted and The Last of Us – also believes the solid-state drive will change the way we game. “I think [the solid-state drive] will allow us to deliver the content in a way that has no friction for the players,” he said, in an interview with The Verge. “They’ll never have to wait to dive back into their games.” 

The gaming industry has long pushed for instantaneous gaming, including streaming games from a cloud-based service. Allowing for huge, expansive worlds, the solid-state drive will also load more details at a faster rate, making for immersive environments and NPCs loading faster than ever. In one test, Marvel's Spider-Man loaded eighteen times faster on the PS5 dev kit than it did on the PS4. Imagine what it could do with a PS5-quality game the size of Skyrim (or bigger). 

"I sort of miss the smaller-scale, fast development, quick turnaround where your entire team is in one room and communication is shouting over your shoulder," said Wells. "[But] the results that we can achieve now on these bigger games, and the lasting impact that it has on the player, is so worth it.”

With updated 8K graphics, super-fast loading times and a boost in processing power – plus all the other features that have yet to be announced – we can't wait for what Naughty Dog and other studios have in store for the PS5.

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