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Comment by Tokiin | Hacker News Reader

Great to see we're finally getting an SSD by default in consoles. The only thing I'm worried about with this is the fact that high capacity SSDs are more expensive and with a push towards more digital storefronts, I'm wondering how this will work for the users. Then again, it's also a wonderful chance to push streaming, so there is that too.

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SSDs have come down in price a lot recently. You can get a 1TB (SanDisk) SSD for £109 https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SDSSDA-1T00-G26-Internal-Sp...

Samsung 1TB 860 QVO is just £90 on Amazon

For a read heavy environment, QLC SSDs should be fine. Sony can probably get the raw QLC flash at something like $.05/GB by next year. They also will have less returns due to damaged consoles, as magnetic HD are by far the most delicate part of the system.

I threw a 1TB 860 EVO into my PS4Pro for relatively cheap (maybe $200 back then?)

Since the console is very low on writes they can probably make these like 0.3DPWD for fairly cheap at Sony scale.

I think consoles are a perfect fit for a fusion drive like in some Apple models. I have tons of games on my Xbox that I'm not going to play any time soon, but don't want to delete. They can be swapped to the hard disk, while games I play more often get loaded onto a smaller SSD.

You probably don't want the drives combined for that, though. You want the active game to be fully loaded onto the SSD.

So at that point of needing a pretty big SSD, make the console less expensive by only having the SSD, then let the user plug in a cheap external hard drive. Five minutes to transfer a game is pretty reasonable.

My guess is that they'll use technology like Apple uses that allows the base game to be downloaded and upcoming assets to be streamed in as needed (and no longer needed assets to be gotten rid of).

The Apple TV does some really interesting stuff with how it manages large games and files. Too bad it doesn't ship with a controller.

not to mention vendors typically sell the hardware at a loss (or at least they used to), and make up those losses via higher margins on content and service sales. I'd be curious to know if that's still the case.

Hasn't been the case this generation from what I remember. Brief google search gives me:

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/251038-theres-no-profit-m...

https://attackofthefanboy.com/news/microsoft-small-profit-ma...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/20/at-399-r...

Seems like Sony was the only one selling at a slight loss (compared to the PS3's heavy 200+ USD loss per unit) and it's most likely improved for everybody since.

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