The highly anticipated successor to Sony’s immensely successful PS4 is finally here. Despite stock shortages, limited supplies, and the myriad problems left in COVID-19’s wake, people rushed to buy the new consoles. Most users are highly satisfied with the experience Sony’s PS5 has to offer. Critics have taken to praising the new DualSense controller and the way new games look.
But with every launch, there are some issues that need a little time to be straightened out. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X was no exception to this rule when it debuted two days prior to the PS5. However, a lot of the “issues” people took to Twitter to complain about turned out to be hoaxes- like people blowing vape smoke into their console and pretending it wasn’t running right.
Likewise, with the PlayStation 5 in the nascent stages of launch, we’ve begun to see a lot of users complaining about storage issues. However, it looks like there’s some level of truth in the matter after all because even PlayStation has responded to complaints with advice. Their solution? To completely wipe your storage clean and start over.
The PlayStation 5 does not support storing games on an external hard drive, unlike the Xbox Series X|S
A lot of confusion stems from the fact that most users weren’t as informed as they should have been. Many people tried to transfer games off their local SSD to a hard drive, and couldn’t get it to work. Well, turns out the PlayStation 5 doesn’t support storing games on an external drive, for whatever reason.
Even on paper, the PS5 has only 825GB of storage on its super-fast SSD, which isn’t a lot. Subtract the overhead for the UI and you’re sitting at around 664GB for all your games. While the memory is technically expandable, right now, the port for additional SSDs is disabled, because Sony hasn’t approved any for usage. So at the end of the day, you’re looking at 664GB of storage as your cap.
Storage issues are rampant on the PS5 right now
The console seems to be prone to severe failures regarding its storage. Earlier this week we saw reports that running new games like Marvel’s Spiderman Remastered led to fatal errors if the console went to sleep. Sony reached out on that front too, but the whole debacle could have been avoided with some proper testing.
The official advice at the moment is from @AskPlayStation on Twitter, and it is as follows. First, download the latest system software, then start the PS5 in safe mode. Then, rebuild the database, which effectively deletes all data on the drive. As you can expect, this wasn’t received well at all.
For most, the issue started with users trying to download games that were ending up in queues indefinitely. Many users were upset to learn they’d need to install everything on their console all over again. Several users said what’s equally frustrating was the response to these serious issues. Many who have consoles incapable of even powering up are being told there are no consoles available to replace theirs. All the while every day you find PS5 consoles on retail.
USB ports on the back of the console might cause problems for some
According to some reports, using the USB ports at the back of the PlayStation 5 can cause data issues. Users complain of data transfer issues plaguing the console when using hard drives connected via the rear ports. The problems seem to persist in some cases even after disconnecting the drives, leading to much speculation as to the cause.
PlayStation really needs to take their customers seriously, and preemptively fix the issues the PS5’s SSD seems to be having. Their sales won’t be affected this generation, but Xbox stands ready to grab up any ground Sony lets slip.