Mandatory PlayStation 4 Installs Explained
Games aren’t played from a Blu-ray disk this gen. Instead, the game is installed from the disk and then played by the hard drive. How does this work? How long will you have to wait while a game installs? Ahead of the PlayStation 4’s US launch, Sony have explained mandatory installs on PS4.
When you first put in a Blu-ray game disk, you’ll be told to wait while it begins caching (Sony’s way of saying installing). This wait period can be as little as under thirty seconds, and then anything more. Once the game has installed enough that you can start playing, it’ll begin and you’ll play while the rest of the installation continues. The full game will be installed on the console, although it can be deleted at any time when you’re done with it. Saves are kept separately.
Knack, for instance, is 37GBs, and all of that will installed onto your system’s hard drive.
This is pretty bad news for those of us that like digital collections. It means you’re going to have to download a pretty sizeable chunk of the install before you can play. Presumably this is because developers can stream some resources from the disk, but not currently from the internet.
And besides. Nobody wants 40GB downloads.
Article By Mat Growcott
Mat Growcott has been a long-time member of the gaming press. He's written two books and a web series, and doesn't have nearly enough time to play the games he writes about.
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