It might be a good idea to go ahead and start planning out exactly how you are going to fill up your new console’s hard drive. Dave Thier from Forbes points out that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are each equipped with 500GB of internal storage, which is plenty to store dozens of current generation of games — but unfortunately for digital hoarders, launch games on PS4 and Xbox One will typically come in between 30 GB to 50GB in size.
This leaves room for around 12 retail games downloaded to the console, and considering how common day-one digital releases have become, downloading full games from each respective console’s store is becoming a viable option for many gamers. It is worth keeping in mind that neither console is going to support external hard drives, although the PS4’s internal hard drive can be upgraded fairly easily.
If anything, this is great news for brick-and-mortar game stores. Without easy access to every digital purchase, consumers will likely continue to pick up hard copies of their games, which they can pop in to their consoles and play immediately without having to reinstall a 40GB file. Once Sony and Microsoft find a way to effectively implement cloud streaming on their consoles, this could be a non-issue. But for now, it’s a good idea to plan ahead.
