A 500GB PlayStation 4 actually has a little more than 400GB of available storage, meaning you’re going to fill that drive up even faster than you thought with the hefty mandatory installations of games like Killzone: Shadow Fall.
That’s according to a series of Tweets from a lucky user named CJ who got his PlayStation 4 three days early and has spent most of the day Tweeting what he’s seen. (We spotted the Tweets over at NeoGAF.) The installation for Killzone: Shadow Fall takes up 39 gigabytes on the PlayStation 4’s hard drive; Call of Duty: Ghosts occupies 32.
Only 3 games in smh pic.twitter.com/7RNcyLHIBf
— CJ (@cjcool804) November 12, 2013
Those are still smaller than the back-of-the-box installation requirement sizes — 45GB declared for Killzone, 49GB for Call of Duty. Still, after three installations, three games occupy an average of 28GB each. At that rate a 500GB machine can install 14 games with a little space left over. It’s more likely, as your collection grows, you’ll be uninstalling old games you haven’t played in a while even if you’re still keeping the discs around.
Gonna need a higger hdd pic.twitter.com/nrIZDz4Rpf
— CJ (@cjcool804) November 12, 2013
Some small portion of a hard drive is usually inaccessible, though the 92GB set aside right off the bat probably is an indication of the PlayStation 4’s firmware size. In a related matter, CJ has yet to download the 300 MB day one firmware update, which means his console is completely offline, though still usable.
This weekend saw reports of users getting their Xbox One preorders two weeks early, believed to be tied to a shipping screwup by the retailer Target. Two users said they were banned from Xbox Live though Microsoft said it will lift the restriction as the console gets closer to launch date. While Shuhei Yoshida, Sony Computer Entertainment’s president of Worldwide Studios, said over Twitter that early PS4 recipients would not face the same kind of sanction, it appears not even to be an issue as no one can get onto PlayStation Network in the first place.
Meantime CJ is still going strong, posting details great and small about what he’s seeing with the console offline.
Comments
43 responses to “A 500GB PlayStation 4 Will Give You About 400GB Of Storage”
Cmon people, technology advances. This is like the debut of the PS3 with its 40gb hdd (or was it 20?) Its a serviceable beginning but soon youll be getting 1, 2 , 3 and 4tb drives no doubt. I mean rose coloured glasses much? 500gb ps3 drives are what, 12.5x the original size? In theory we could end up with what, 7 – 8 tb drives or more? But, I guess, any reason to complain…
100GB is pretty insane for firmware no matter what the advances are. The limit to capacity of disks is related to many spindles you can fit in a standard enclosure. You probably saw the story about using He in drives which allows more spindles up to 6TB. That won’t see the consumer market for awhile.
I wonder if part of that 100Gb is set aside for the constant video recording it does in addition to reserving space for the firmware?
i reckon, hd video takes a bit of space.
It’s probably closer the 57GB for the OS (not 100). 500GB advertised is closer to 465GB in the real world.
465-408=57.
Not only will the consumer not see drives like that for a while – they won’t come in configurations available for the PS4 i.e. 2.5″ 9mm drives.
And you know this how? Speculate much while pretending it’s not speculation?
But it’s software not firmware.
For reference, some of the launch title install sizes for the PS3:
Call of Duty 3, 0.60 GB (Optional)
Genji: Days of the Blade, 2.14GB (Optional)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire, 4.2GB (Optional)
Resistance: Fall of Man, 0.22GB (Mandatory)
Ridge Racer 7, 5.0GB (Optional)
The hard drive size increase of 12.5x doesn’t match the increase in mandatory install sizes.
Call of Duty 3 vs. Call of Duty Ghosts install size is an increase of 54x times.
It doesn’t really matter if it absolutely matches or not, it’s more to the point that technology marches on as time does as we like bigger better things. Keep things in perspective, this is the initial harddrive, they can be upgraded and over time will be. We started with 40 and now we’re at 500. A far cry from where we started. Simple fact is, again, it’s just that people like to complain. Still, would’ve been nice to be able to use external hdd’s as well. That’s a pity.
We can only have 2.5″ hard drives that exist and are affordable.
1.5gb exists. I think 2gb does. Both are expensive.
We might have 1tb in a PS4 in a year or so, but I don’t see it going up much beyond that.
At this point you don’t see it going up beyond that. When 40gb came out, I’m positive people didn’t see 1.5tb or 2tb existing either. I’m quite sure when I got my first 20mb hdd I didn’t even have the ability to envision a 2tb hdd lol.
Pricey, yes, all hardware is when it first comes out. But as this tech becomes more common we’ll see stuff like this become more common place and price invariably drops. SSD’s are starting to drop in price for example. It’s 1tb for sure, but they’re scaling down size accordingly.
http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/other-devices/kingston-debuts-1-terabyte-usb-3-0-flash-drive-with-matching-price-tag-1124153
I can’t remember the whole time line, but I remember 80gb 3.5″” hard drives being cheap way before the PS3 was released. I think I owned a 320gb 2.5″ at around that time.
Will we have 8tb 2.5″ drives? Yes. Undoubtedly. Will they at some stage be cheap. Yes. Undoubtedly. That’s not in question.
What is in question is the time line.
They’ve only just developed technology to take 3.5″ drives to beyond 4gbs. I’m no expert, but it seems that the HDD manufacturers had hit a stumbling block which significantly slowed advancements in regards to 3.5″ HDDs and it appears to me, as a lay man consumer, to be much the same with 2.5″ drives.
It took ages for 1gb 2.5″ drives to drop in price.
Flash drives are great – but completely irrelevant as we’re not able to install games onto a flash drive, unfortunately.
Actually, you’re able to install games onto SSD’s which utilise very similair technology to 1tb flashdrives ;). But that’s beside the point. It does take a while, but you’re looking at an 8 year plan for the PS4. Too many people are wanting everything *right now*. Hardware stumbled while game dev did, it goes hand in hand, now that game dev is spinning up again no doubt we’ll see hardware spin up too. There’s some very nice hybrid drives out there, ssd/plate hybrids that are very fast, high capacity and should fit?
Of course, price is always a factor…
Wont affect me, i don’t plan on having 14 games installed at once..
Exactly. I think some people are REALLY overstating this. The reality is that this will be an issue for a very small amount of users. For most it will be irrelevant.
Yeah, I don’t know about that.
PSN+ subscribers will have a large digital collection before long, and why wouldn’t you want those games to be available?
Yes you could download, play, delete, and rinse and repeat, but given the large file size of the games it’s going to be better and more convenient for most just to download the once.
true but in the off chance i actually download a game i WILL NOT ever want to download it again so i definitely wont delete it.
im interested on how they will go about allowing you to transfer from your old HDD to the new 2TB drive if it ever becomes affordable.
and also.
if 57GB is needed for the OS. will i have to perform a 57GB download if i want to use a bigger drive at launch?
Just like the PS3 I’d recommend everyone upgrade HDDs to at least a TB before they actually put any data on it, it’s so much easier than waiting for it to fill up and then transferring all your information.
I’ve upgraded my PS3 HDD twice in its lifetime. Was easy both times, but can be time consuming when you have a lot of games installed data.
Samsung’s Spinpoint M9T is a 2Tb drive that just so happens to exactly match the PS4’s requirements that just got released.
Coincidence or the universe telling me something?
I found it bloody difficult to get those screws out, though – they put them in damn tight at the factory. Hopefully it’ll be a bit less of a pain this time..
The trick is to use the right screw driver. I found a flat blade worked better than trying to get a Phillips into the stupidly shallow screw heads they used.
I think it’s also only a single screw now instead of 4 like on the PS3?
That’s because they were posi drive headed screws, not phillips…the more you know 🙂
Yeah I upgraded my PS3 120gb to 500gb, and recently upgraded to 1TB.
With PSN+ the 1TB will be filled, it’s just a matter of time.
Personally I’d rather not have to faff around with the installing of a new hard drive – especially the larger size. I had an error on my 1TB shortly after installing and had to download approx 350gb of data. If it wasn’t for the absurdly large internet quota I get that would have been a real pain.
Given the size of these next gen games (generally seem to be about the 40Gb mark), I’m actually becoming a big concerned about the practicality of PS+. As it stands now I didn’t bother downloading some games (e.g. Hitman Absolution) simply because the size of the download / install put me off. And that was less than half of what some of these next gen launch titles are. It’s going to be a killer in terms of download quotas and HDD space.
Yep, internet quotas will definitely play a part.
I’ve not downloaded Metal Gear Resistance yet as it’s a 19gb file, and apparently only a 4 hour game (?).
I’ve recently gone on a lower level internet quota which might have been a bit silly. I’ve gone from huge internet quota, to extremely large.
I’m not sure if extremely large is adequate. Probably not.
I definitely won’t be buying a PS4 at launch, as I have too many PS3 games, and strangely I’m getting excited about playing them. For some bizarre reason I’m excited about playing Assasins Creed 1. I’ve owned it for about 5 years now, and all of a sudden I’m excited. Weird.
I think I might be tempted to hold off purchasing the PS4 until there is a bump in the HDD space, although I should imagine it will go to 750gb and then 1gb, and not to 1.5gb for maybe 2 years.
I assume you mean 1Tb 😛 I’ll probably pick up a PS4 early next year, but I’ll be replacing the HDD immediately. I don’t want to download my 40Gb (or whatever) Battlefield 4 then replace the HDD and have to download that 40Gb (plus whatever else I’ve downloaded) again to the new drive.
Yep tb
For me it’s not just wanting to not download it again, but it’s the whole swapping over the hard drive and then backing up the existing files etc.
It took days to back up my 500gb files – yeah it’s really slow on the PS3, and then a week into using the new hard drive the hard drive has a hissy fit and I have to format the drive.
The convenience of just having a large hard drive in the first place is quite important.
I’d accept, but wouldn’t be entirely comfortable, with anything less than 2TB
I thought PS4 didn’t support external storage? Does that apply only to media? I thought it meant everything i.e. no more back up to USB drivesetc.
The PS3 backup is damn slow… I do mine every week or two, I always have to leave it running overnight. It also annoys me there’s no option to have it automatically shut down after it finishes the backup 😛
Oh I really don’t know.
I would presume that the PS4 allows you to backup your hard drive – there must be some way to back up data so that people can replace / upgrade their hard drives when they need to.
Did Sony say changing HDD’s wont void the warranty?
Yes, it’s officially supported. They even provide the instructions on how to do it.
This is somewhat worrying for the Xbox One. I have no doubt the mandatory installs will be comparable in size and the firmware will be similar also, but still no word on external HDD support.
They announced external hard drive support. I think it’s one of those ‘shortly after launch’ situations though. But they’ve said it’s definitely going to happen.
Anyone know if the ps4 will use a 2.5 sata hdd like the ps3?
As long as it’s a 9.5mm 5400rpm I believe.
As long as it is a 2.5″ drive and no more than 9mm thick.
Can be any speed, HDD or SSD etc.
Huh. I could have sworn I saw somewhere it had to be a 5400 for some reason. If I’m wrong (likely) that’s good news.
Currently have a 1tb 7200 in my PS3 – works like a charm… by that I mean the 6+ year old console was dying before and after the hard drive swap, but the harddrive works fine (its brand new) it’s just the consoles dying (shuts itself off) during games but has no relevance to which hard-drive I have in it.
. o O (I think my Windows 7 install is somewhere around 200GB…)
Windows 7 is only about 35gb.
I have Windows 7 Professional 64bit and it takes up somewhere around 15gb dunno how you manage to get Windows 7 to take up 35gb :S
My work PC’s windows folder is exactly 25GB but thats with Win 7 pro + all updates.
Drivers can push the folder larger but not by too much.
As long as the whole play-while-you-install thing works well, this wouldn’t be much of an issue to me. I don’t understand how these games can be so badly compressed, but. It’s like they’re using raw textures/FLAC/video or something?
Are you implying that I won’t be able to mindlessly install games over the next 2-3 years without having to manage my hard drive? I demand the ability of having at least 20 games at my fingertips at all times.
Boycott PS4.
decided to post this since i have a 1tb HDD running out.
thee 500GB had 430GB space, and when i installed the 1TB into it, guess what i had only 850GB thats 150GB missing, why is that the bigger the HDD the less space you have.