See how much faster Sony’s next PlayStation can load Spider-Man
Sony's official video comparing performance of PS4 Pro vs next-gen PlayStation pic.twitter.com/2eUROxKFLq
— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) May 21, 2019
Last month, Sony showed Wired a demo highlighting how the PS4's successor would utilize SSD storage to heavily improve load times over the PS4. Now we can all see a similar demo for ourselves, thanks to video captured at a recent investor presentation.
The video above, taken by the Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki, shows a scene from Insomniac's Spider-Man loading in 0.83 seconds on Sony's "next generation" console, compared to 8.1 seconds on the PS4 Pro. That's a smaller improvement than the one cited by Wired (which reported a change from "15 seconds" to "0.8 seconds, to be exact") but it's still a difference that can add up over the course of hours spent with a game.
Sony's demo also showed how the upcoming console's SSD can help improve game situations where content is streamed continuously from the hard drive rather than loaded in large chunks. In a fly-through on Spider-Man's version of New York City, a PS4 Pro had to pause every few seconds when the apparent flight speed got too fast. On the next PlayStation, the data streams without any apparent loading pauses even at the increased speed.