Yeah, I know it's possible to delete stuff. But because of the mandatory install for every game and the size games are now, the guys at GameSpot filled up almost the entire hard drive with just the launch games. They only had about 100GB or something left. Plus add all your game installs on to any video or pictures you take or DLC you download. The harddrive doesn't really seem big enough for the size of the games and the mandatory installs.

This is an issue I've been seeing coming for a while. It was nice to see the values compared to last gen but as soon as I started seeing that all these games were like 50 GB it's clear that the HD problem is an issue.

At least you can upgrade but yeah...

Yeah if you install all the games all the time it will become a problem for sure. But that is why you can easily replace this hardrive as well. Personally I don't mind the 500. On Steam I only have like 3 big games and a few smaller ones installed. If I do not play these games right now I just delete them and re download it in like 1 hour for really big games.

Yup, games are getting big and will only get bigger. We'll just need to uninstall when done with a SP game, no big deal.

Since the games install while you play level one and there's no real wait, this isn't as much of an issue as I thought it would be. Worst case scenario you delete the data for a game you end up wanting to play more, the penalty is a 3 minute wait? No big deal.

If you had to wait for a full install I would agree, but you don't.

Now downloading is a bigger deal. I'm definitely sticking to discs, don't want to download and redownload 50GB games.

Yeah this kinda sucks but not that big of an issue to me and my purchase. I will probably just upgrade the HD to several TBs in a year or so.

When I learned about the required installation, my first thought was "Ok, they should make a system that auto deletes one of the games installed that you rarely played" and the first question asked I see is "Does the PS4 auto delete installs? No, we didn't want to take away something from the players without their knowledge so they will have to delete whichever game install they want gone" (quote is summed)

Not a problem as it seems so quick to delete an re install data.

Off topic does any one know if X1 has the same installing method as PS4?

Even before we heard of big mandatory installs, 500GB was already too small.

Still can't believe these systems are shipping with anything less than 1TB

In what world is 500 GB too small?

@trafalgarlaw: This one

the world we're living in starting friday, where games have mandatory 50gb installs. You can only install 8-10 games, that's not very high capacity. A 500gb HDD in a 360 would be amazing since the installs are optional and most games are only about 8gb's. But ps4's hard drive is relatively small for the amount of data it's gonna need. I'm probably gonna get a 2 tb or something eventually just so I don't have to bother with installing and uninstalling.

So say your hdd is full and you need to install a game, that takes like what, a minute? If you can't handle the luxury problem get a bigger hdd.

I know they said that the system will not support external hard drives but do they mean it will never support them. I think it is a feature they might not have at launch but will patch it in the future making this issue not a problem.

Welcome to the digital age.

Here's my guess. When they inevitably make the first PS4 "Slim", or whatever they decide to name it, we're not going to see a price drop. They'll just add a reasonably sized hard drive in the box.

I have a question about installs if anyone knows the answer to this.

I remember in one of Sony's 'Lifestyle' videos they showed a point in the download process where you had the options of in Killzone 'Download Single Player' 'Download Multiplayer'. My question is, would it theoretically be possible to say once I'm done with the Single Player of Killzone to just delete all the single player content and just keep the Multiplayer content on my PS4? I imagine it has some shared assets like geometry, models, textures and such for the MP maps but I wonder if I could delete the core package.

This may not save too much HDD space in the long run but it would nice to just have the MP on the machine to pop in anytime I want.

Those numbers on the back aren't really "installs", they are caching amounts. If you fill up the drive it will start deleting old cached data and then the game just will have to reload.

So if you get too many huge games, you might have to wait a little bit if you switch frequently to the one you haven't played most recently.

So don't sweat it so much.

This isn't going to be an issue until maybe next holiday season. Not enough games coming out quickly enough for the next eight months for this to be a major problem at this point.

are the install times pretty snappy...if you can play the game as it caches then I wont mind deleting that

I'm juggling installs with my 80 GB PS3 fatty all the time. It's a nuisance for sure, but download speeds have increased tremendously for me - and installing off discs takes less than a minute on PS4, before I can play (apparently). Even at an average of 30-50 GBs per game, I can still have up to 10 full games installed at the same time. I rarely play more than 2 games at a time, let alone on the same platform.

Between upgrading the HDD (which I won't do), and playing the game while it installs (most games will be playable in under a minute), it's not really an issue beyond the annoyance of deleting games. So it's a minute to delete a game, a minute for it to install a new game far enough to boot up - 2 minute hassle every now and then... I can deal with it.

Hell - even on PC, I usually only have a few of my games installed. I've got plenty of games on Steam and Origin, but I've each only got one installed most of the time.

Welcome to the future

This really puts a damper on my plan to put an SSD into the PS4. I wish it allowed for storing games on an external drive.

The one where my PC has like 9TB

This has been a known "potential issue" for weeks months even its nothing new and should be no surprise to anyone.

If you can simply put the disc in and start playing whats the big issue if you have to delete a game every few months when it seamlessly installs back the next time you play?

I just want someone to answer what size of HDD can fit in (thickness wise). The huge FAQ seemed to imply only 9.5mm drives or smaller were compatible, but that seems doubtful from images I've seen.

Either way, I'll have to get myself a 1TB or bigger.

I have a 250GB SSD as the main drive in my PC and 142 games on Steam, I fail to see how this is the world shattering, pre-order cancelling, hell on Earth some people are thinking. That isn't even counting Origin, and the installers from GOG, and all the other shit on my PC.

Could someone explain to me how this is any different and so much worse because I am not seeing it.

@sign: Yeah it's not, I think some of the console only gamers are getting a taste of the PC side. I'm pretty muh in the same boat as you, I've got over 50 steam games but only some of them are installed because my SSD is only 256. That said it's not a big deal to queue up a download while playing something else.

@nictel: In what world does it take a single minute to install a 50GB game?

Well in all fairness each game does have a 20-40 second buffer before you can start playing it. Even if HDD management is a issue early on if you only have to wait 40 seconds before being able to hop in and play deleting and re-installing stuff on a whim might not be that big of a deal.

I don't know specifically how they compare, but yes, the Xbox One also requires games to be installed to the hard drive.

Installing the game takes longer, but you can play before it is finished installing, so he's likely referring to the time it takes from starting the install, until you can play.

(whether it is actually that quick, or not, I don't know, but I think that's what he's referring to)

Depends on how long it takes to install a game and how easy it is to search through your games library.. You can argue that this is common with a PC but a reason many people prefer consoles is their ease of use. If you have juggle deleting, installing or reinstalling games often then it could be pretty annoying. It's also made slightly worse because you can't use external hard drives.

@jimmyfenix: Xbone doesn't play games off the disc, only off the harddrive, so you have to install every game

This is exactly why I've been wondering if they will operate with an "owned" library (like steam), which it seems they are not doing. Having limited space is fine if you can still very easily browse your library and install/uninstall at will. I've been playing around with digital games on PS3 for a while already, and without any way to check your collection it pretty much turns into an "uninstall and forget" situation.

Also, they better have fixed the problem where you need twice the amount of space to download and install digital games, as that would pretty much mean you need a fourth of your disk space clear to download many of the bigger games.

What an unnecessary thread. Like the PS3, you can use watever hard drive you want, so if you want a 3TB drive, put that in.

What, Sony should've put in a 1TB hard drive and amped the price of the PS4? Do you know how stupid that sounds? Most probably won't even use the 500GB.

The installs are fast and painless, since you can play while installing.

The OCD of people who must have everything installed and cannot delete it or the demons will get them, is not painless.

500 gigs is the new 20

This pallet of Sony-Branded Digital Storage Devices I have right over here says it's no problem at all.

How many can I ring up for you?

At times like this I like to remember that somewhere in Major Nelson's house, is a 60GB Xbox drive, entirely filled with downloaded Star Trek: TOS episodes. Don't ask me to cite the podcast, but from my lips to Ballmer's ears, I swear he actually promoted this as a reasonable idea for a Trek geek to do.

That's why I don't understand people bitching about how the PS4 has too many indie games. You know what? Indies games are pretty fun and best of all they are more affordable and have way more manageable file sizes. A game like Don't Starve was about 300mbs on the PC. When KZ and BF are hogging up 100gbs of storage its nice to have a mix of smaller games that aren't bloated hi-fi audio files from the bombastic sound design.

truth! Seriously? How many single player games do you go back to after you beat them to boredom? Most people are going to say few to none. How much time you spending on BF3 now that you have BF4... again most people going to say not a lot. When you are done with the game just delete it and keep the save files.

I'm lucky enough to live in a place with decently fast internet and no monthly cap, so this isn't exactly an issue for me, but I definitely understand the concern.

If it didn't take seconds to install the games I'd say this was an issue.

Well, at least I'll have motivation to actually finish games in a week instead of taking a year.

It's definitely crazy that both systems are shipping with a 500GB HDD yet require mandatory installs. It's 2013, the systems really should have shipped with 1TB Hard drives (at least they're not Nintendo crazy?). That said, I don't really mind having to manage game installs, I already do it with my 360 and PS3 and their smaller HDDs. It's really only a problem if Sony were boneheaded enough to repeat the same mistake they made with the Vita and attach game saves to game installs.

This is not true. You are limited to 2.5" drives with a <= 9.5mm profile. After searching a bit, I think this means 1TB is the maximum size available right now.

That's why they make the HD easily swappable. Issue solved.

Their test of SSD seemed to suggest it wasn't that much of a difference (unless you care about 10 seconds) and regular HDD are super cheap for even 1 TB so... I don't really see a problem here.

Only if "double" solves the problem easily. I'm not sure it does. I would like there to be a 2T to 4T answer available now, but unless I'm missing something, there isn't.

You're buying a very powerful machine for a pretty cheap price. 500 GB should last most people for a while. If you plan on buying 20 new games at a pretty regular rate, then you should be able to invest in a bigger hard drive.

the world 5 years ago.