PlayStation 5 Could Have Removable SSD Storage
PlayStation 5 games are probably going to take up a lot of space, which means it'll be very difficult for us to keep our digital collections on one hard drive. Fear not, though: it appears a recent patent may have revealed Sony's solution to that particular problem.
A few days back, Let's Go Digital uncovered a Brazilian patent registration for what appeared to be a PlayStation 5 cartridge. At first, the outlet speculated that Sony might be taking its PS5 titles old school, selling them on carts rather than disc-based media. But after Let's Go Digital investigated a little more (and the fine folks at Push Square translated the findings), it discovered that the patent was actually registered in Japan already, and that patent explained the purpose of the cartridge a bit better.
"This is a recording medium which can record various data, such as a character, an image, an animation, a sound and a program," the patent reads. "By loading the opening provided by the game console with the tip end part by which a variety of pins of this cartridge were provided, the various data recorded on this cartridge can be read."
The key here seems to be "recording medium," as in, you're meant to record data to the cartridge; it's not a read-only cart designed to hold whatever game you happen to be buying. Based on that, Let's Go Digital now believes Sony plans to offer removable SSD storage cartridges for the PlayStation 5. This definitely feels like a step in the right direction, as built-in system storage is never enough, these days, and external USB drives may not be on par with an insertable solid state drive as far as speed goes.
The big question we have, though, is this: how much would these things potentially cost? The last thing — and we mean the last thing — Sony needs is another proprietary storage debacle. We saw what overpriced storage did to the PlayStation Vita. The PS5 really can't make that same mistake.
We'll keep an eye out for more PS5 news and let you know if anything else surfaces about these PS5 cartridges.