No SSDs in next gen consoles! :-(

Anyone else fear this is going to be this gen's equivalent to studios not being able to program for 360 properly because people might have the arcade model? I bet the two years later refresh models (think 360 elite) will have SSDs, and certainly the PSFour and Xbox slim models will by that time, but even beyond pissing off early adopters, developers can't really program their games to fully take advantage of SSDs knowing they can't give unfair advantages vs. 5400rpm players. I know Xbox needs huge hard drive space for TiVo style functions, but PS4 and Geiki sure could've benefitted from 180GB of SSD space as opposed to 500/1000 GB of 5400rpm space. So many current gen games struggled solely because of hard drive transfer speeds. Sure, with more RAM, that wouldn't be necessary, and game textures won't be 16 times the file size the way the 8GB of RAM is 16x the old 512megabytes. I just think games in the coming years will struggle with 8GB just like the very latest 360/PS3 games struggle now with 512MB. Having an SSD would mean never having to have a "memory expansion" unit, it'd save developers polishing time and money, and extend this generation a few years further.

@boocreepyfootdoctor: I think it is likely that a version of the new consoles will include a SSD. Similar to the Wii U or the PS3 slims that have SSDs.

SSD is sort of still expensive especially at the GB capacity these new machines need. It would make the prices of each console skyrocket.

If SSD's drop in price enough I guess we could see them in hardware revisions. The cost:size ratio just works out better for HDDs right now and both consoles need the space.

Is 5400rpm confirmed though? I don't remember reading that anywhere.

Even really cheap SSDs are still 2-3 times the price for half the space of a regular hard drive. That idea was dead before it was even born. And if they were going to put 200$ worth of additional tech in those boxes there would be better ways to spend that money than on an SSD.

Keeping the costs down is important at the moment. Neither Microsoft nor Sony want to have a PS3 moment when they announce the price of the console. There's nothing stopping hardware revisions coming in a couple of years time once SSD costs have dropped significantly.

Also, it wouldn't be very "consumer friendly" if it had a separate small SSD and large Hard Drive. The average consumer doesn't necessarily know the benefits of an SSD and what to have on the SSD and on the Hard Drive. They'd probably just fill up the SSD and then start filling up the HDD without paying much attention. So if that idea is out of the window, you need a large SSD to store all your games, which would be prohibitively expensive.

SSD is a hard feature to advertise. It's easy to say "the CPU and graphics card and RAM are all x times faster than the previous generation!" but it's hard to get people to pony-up the extra for less storage, even though the storage in question would be a little faster and more stable than regular old hard drives.

Hell, I know what an SSD is and what it can do, and I still opted to save the money I would spend on an SSD for a bigger hard drive and better parts in other places. The speed increase just isn't worth it unless you absolutely must shave a handful of seconds away from load times, and to the average consumer "500GB of storage!" sounds a hell of a lot better than "256GB of slightly faster storage for the same amount of (or more) money!"

Most 2.5" HDDs are 5400RPM. It's only the relatively high end drives that are 7200RPM. It's not confirmed, but I'd bet the manufacturers would rather save the $10 per drive for something they can't advertise to average consumers.

@believer258: I dig what you're saying, and I'm not looking for an argument, but to call it "slightly faster" storage is a bit disingenuous. Anecdotal evidence here, but my desktop boots from an SSD in about 25 seconds, and my laptop boots from a HDD in about two minutes.

Aren't SSD's kinda pricy still?

It is a cost benefit thing. SSD are a lot faster but have a short life span/fail faster. We all know how well things go when consoles won't boot due to hardware failure.

SSDs would make the consoles prohibitively expensive.

That's true, but I don't think your everyday consumer will pony up the extra money for an SSD that's equal in storage to the HDD that MS will put in there.

Also, if we want to talk anecdotally, then my desktop with Windows 8 boots up very quickly, sometimes before I even get around to turning on my TV. I'll bet that this console has been designed to boot up even faster than Windows 8 does. If speed is an issue here, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Here, this is probably the simplest, most elaborate way that anyone can put it. I'd imagine that the idea of an SSD came up and then got quickly shot down. It costs too much and is too hard to advertise.

I've played Steam games on my SSD and my 7200rpm HDD. The difference is noticeable, but not nearly enough to justify the price increase. If SteamTool didn't make transfering games between my SSD and HDD, I would gladly just game on my HDD.

SSD's don't last as long as HDD's, would of been too expensive and risky.

The slow boot times are due to your other laptop components, not just your HDD. A desktop running on a good CPU with 4GB RAM will boot well under a minute (although it would be heavily dependent on how many programs automatically boot up at start).

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiis.

Jesus, is it confirmed that the drives are 5400rpm? There's no way, they have to be 7200rpm at least. Think of how long a next-gen Elder Scrolls will take to load with a hard drive the same speed as this gen's HDD's. I'm just not buying it, it won't be feasible. Its gotta be 7200rpm.

Is it confirmed 2.5"? My first assumption would be for that form factor but it's a pretty bulky and very rectangular box. I could see the fitting a 3.5" in somewhere.

Why would Sony stray from allowing users to put any 2.5" HDD in their PS4? Hell, even the PS3 allowed SSDs to fit and work in it.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2013/05/20130514-XBOX-ONE-TEARDOWN-014-660x440.jpg the shots in the wired article show it as a 2.5" but things could still change obviously.

We're not going to see SSDs in consoles any time soon. Even though the price has gone down in the last few years, SSDs are still way too expensive to put into consoles without having a $600+ price tag attached to them, especially if you want large capacity of something more than, say, 200GB.

I can see them having SSDs as an aftermarket part you can bolt on down the line, but it's not going to be in the box from the factory.

5 years from now.... We'll see.

Ahh somehow I missed that. First image in that gallery clearly states 2.5" HDD and there isn't much wiggle room. Hopefully that large fan will mean fewer jet engines spooling up in peoples' homes too. Thanks for the link!

My 250GB SSD cost more than an Xbox360 costs. There's no way.

@villainy: No problemo!

I'm quite happy they seem to be taking cooling seriously this time around. Both Sony and MS had issues with heat this generation, (microsoft moreso obviously). Hopefully the heatsinks and fan show that they intend these things to last awhile.

@amikron: Is it bad that seeing the insides is the one thing that has actually sparked some sort of excitement in me for the Xbox One? I have to give Microsoft props for letting Wired or anyone see the internals and post shots online.

I thought after a flooding crisis, traditional hard drives were now prohibitively expensive. PS3 supposedly doesn't allow your custom HDD installs to be 7200rpm, I thought for overheating purposes, which be equally a problem on next gen. And what about those hybrid hard drives that do like 32GB SSD in cahoots with a TB regular drive. Seagate makes them for like 100$, and that's external, with retail cuts, packaging, delivery, etc. So a 500Gb hybrid drive without retail markup and external casing and interfaces, at the bulk discount you get with mass console orders, should've been feasible, and worked well enough. You'd only need the SSD for your most installed games, and could likely get 2-4 of them installed or partially installed (like forza does it) on 32GB.

It's unfortunate. No one thinks about rich people :( ;) I do not understand though why they did not take the iMac route with a small "caching" SSD. Stability I guess. I have no problem with manually installing a hard drive.

that's a lot of thoughts