The PS5 launched with an 825GB SSD, but only 667GB of that is actually usable. Around 158GB are occupied by the system software, meaning players don’t have much space to download games, which is especially worrying considering how sizable modern titles are.
For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War takes up 130GB on the PS5, which alone consumes 1/5th of available storage. What can we do about this? The simple answer is to upgrade, but this is currently impossible and when it does become available, it will be expensive.
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If you were looking to increase the storage available on a PS4, you could buy a 2TB Seagate Hard Drive at Amazon for $69.99. This is a pretty reasonable price, especially for space that large.
However, when we compare this to the pricing of an SSD, especially one that can compare to the incredible speeds found within the PS5’s SSD, things get exponentially more expensive.
Sony has yet to announce which products will be compatible as additional storage on the PS5, meaning we’re currently stuck with the base 667GB available. But considering the specifications of the built-in SSD, we can guess.
The Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD seems to match the speed of the PS5, but you’d need to cough up $229.99 at Amazon to get your hands on it. Keep in mind, this is half the space for nearly triple the cost when compared to Seagate’s 2TB PS4 counterpart.
We can even compare this to the 1TB Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S, which currently costs $219.99. This is nearly half the price of the Xbox Series X or PS5 consoles themselves, so it’s undeniably hard to swallow.
There’s no denying that the power of the SSD is an exciting prospect for the future of games, but it’s already proving to be an expensive venture. We can only hope that these products get cheaper as they become industry standard.
