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Huge PS5 leak spills new details about one of Sony’s most important features

Published Feb 2nd, 2020 9:02AM EST
PS5 Release Date
Image: Jensen/Epa/REX/Shutterstock

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January came and went without Sony announcing the highly-anticipated PlayStation Meeting 2020 event that many people believe will take place in February 2020. Reports said the console would be unveiled early in the month, which isn’t feasible right now since invitations haven’t yet been sent out. With that in mind, late February seems like our best bet for the PS5 unveiling.

While Sony isn’t ready to share invites for the press event, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that seems to suggest Sony is getting ready to announce the new console, including new trademark documentation that Sony filed with regulators ahead of the console’s official launch. And we now have a brand new leak that seems to reveal more details about the most important feature of Sony’s new PlayStation 5 hardware.

Both the Xbox Series X and PS5 will feature the same core CPU and GPU components, and they’ll offer similar performance. But Sony may have an advantage over the Xbox when it comes to storage speed, even though both devices will feature fast solid-state drives.

Neither Microsoft nor Sony told fans how much built-in storage each console will have. But Sony did reveal that it is rethinking the way game installs work in order to free up as much storage space as possible — if you’re only interested in multiplayer gaming, for example, you’ll be able to install just the multiplayer part of a game. At the same time, the new consoles will allow for richer graphics and gaming experiences, and the PS5 will support 100GB disks. So don’t be surprised to see that future PS5 games may take up more storage than PS4 titles.

A leak a few days ago suggested that the PS5 dev kits being used by top developers have 1TB SSDs onboard, which could be an indication of the minimum storage of the final versions of the new PlayStation. Separately, a report said that Sony is working on offering as much as 2TB of storage.

While SSDs are becoming more affordable, they’re still far more expensive than HDDs and Sony will have to find the right balance. Gamers will want plenty of fast storage on the console, but the console can’t be too expensive or it might send gamers over to the Xbox Series X.

A while ago, we learned that Samsung may have created new SSDs for consoles and gaming computers. These are of the NVMe PCIe 4.0 variety, and Samsung just unveiled one such device, the 980 EVO Pro that was announced back at CES. It’s a device that supports lightning-fast sequential speeds of up to 6500 MB/s (read) and 5000 MB/s (write). The 980 Pro will come in capacities of up to 1TB.

Meanwhile, Dutch blog LetsGoDigital found trademarks for three SSD-related Samsung devices, including Unstoppable Speed, NVMe SSD 980 EVO, and NVMe SSD 980 QVO. Samsung’s name isn’t anywhere on the documentation that was filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), but the names are giveaways that we’re looking at Samsung products.

“Unstoppable Speed” seems like something Samsung would want to brag about when it comes to storage on certain devices, especially gaming rigs. The NVMe SSD 980 QVO drive sounds familiar because Samsung named it back in mid-October when it shared the SSD roadmap for QLC NAND and 96-layer 3D NAND, as AnandTech reported at the time. But Samsung provided no firm details back then:

Samsung also mentioned the 860 QVO SATA and 980 QVO NVMe client drives. Since these names don’t fit into Samsung’s OEM SSD naming scheme, we assume these are upcoming retail products, but Samsung hasn’t shared any release plans.

Without release schedules or detailed technical specifications, it’s hard to assess the state of Samsung’s QLC efforts, but the sheer number of models makes it clear that Samsung sees QLC NAND as a very important part of their storage portfolio going forward.

LetsGoDigital

speculates that it’s unlikely for the PS5 to pack more expensive 980 EVO drives. Instead, Samsung’s 980 QVO models will likely equip the consoles, which could explain why Samsung postponed their introduction and it’s only trademarking them now. The 980 QVO could be significantly cheaper than the 980 EVO, which should help Sony keep the PS5’s price tag at the rumored $499.99 mark.

Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.