Of all the things PS5’s lead architect Mark Cerny spoke of when he did a soft reveal for the console not too long ago, the thing that excited him the most was the inclusion of an SSD, which is something Sony themselves have talked up great deal since then as well.
Cerny demonstrated what an SSD will enable- showing Spider-Man running on a PS4 Pro, and then on a PS5, to show the differences in not only loading times, but also in graphics rendering that an SSD brought about. Recently, at Sony’s corporate strategy meeting in Tokyo, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida took to the stage to show that demonstration to an audience (which you can view below, courtesy of Takashi Mochizuki on Twitter).
The demonstration showed the PS4 Pro taking about 8 seconds to load a scene in Spider-Man, whereas that same scene was loaded up on a PS5 rig in less than a second. The demo, which was created using the game’s assets in just two weeks (via Twinfinite) also showed that thanks to the SSD, the game was also able to render things at a much faster rate, allowing the player to move about much faster, no longer being limited by the game’s own speed for loading environments.
Yoshida himself talked up the console’s “extraordinary improvement in rendering speed”, thanks to the inclusion of an SSD, and how it will “greatly exceed” what developers are able to achieve in their games with the new and more powerful hardware on hand. Take a look at the demonstration for yourself below.