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[Gamer79]

Certain games I like to play become a bore just due to the simple loading times. Rockstar games like GTA V and RDR2 fall into this category. Playing this type of games are fun while they last but the obscene load times take away from my enjoyment.

I understand the scale of such games but could we see an end to extreme loadiing times soon.?

 

[nikolino840]

I use the loading time to take a beer...go to bathroom... scratch my balls ahah don't bother me so much ...

With Kingdomcome deliverance i can go out to take a coffee in a bar

 

[JimboJones]

I think developers will always find a way, especially on fixed hardware platforms there will always be games that can't load fast enough.
PC you can brute force your way through load times by buying buying better hardware.

 

[DrNeroCF]

Most of 'loading' time is decompressing textures, setting things up, mostly CPU heavy work. The Stadia PCs have pretty low clocked CPUs, so if the actual loading isn't super multithreaded (won't be as long as devs can rely on beefy CPUs, unlike in consoles), they're probably not going to have better loading.

Though, if the Stadia systems are being specifically developed for, there might be some extra optimization there.

 

[PhoenixTank]

Most of 'loading' time is decompressing textures, setting things up, mostly CPU heavy work. The Stadia PCs have pretty low clocked CPUs, so if the actual loading isn't super multithreaded (won't be as long as devs can rely on beefy CPUs, unlike in consoles), they're probably not going to have better loading.

Though, if the Stadia systems are being specifically developed for, there might be some extra optimization there.

Seems like the Stadia platform will have obscene IOPS, if nothing else. I can't say I've looked at the effects of throwing an SSD in a console for a while but that at least usually presents a significant loading time speedup vs a single 5400RPM HDD. Going to depend on where the bottleneck is, of course.

 

[UltimaKilo]

This is my biggest issue with the Switch. If they were to have slapped a better CPU on it, load times could theoretically be super fast.

Not to mention the need for more stable frame rates on the Switch.

 

[One Eyed Willy]

Storage class memory, starting with NVMe DIMMs (ie. Intel Optane) on PCs, then later on consoles will solve long loading times. When your I/O is nearly 100,000 its kind of sorta faster than 75 IOPs on a spinning drive fucking lol. Even SSDs are a joke in comparison. The future of storage is non volatile memory DIMMs, not storage, not m.2.. but in memory, and persistent. Storage will regress into archive means, at best.

Dense mulit-core architecture (48 core sockets are coming) + storage class memory is the future of everything and the reason why public "cloud" will stop being a thing, largely. Azure, AWS, pretty much every cloud provider will not be able to build the above then build a marginable model on top when customers can just built it themselves. Everything it starting to swing backwards, already today.

 

[EDMIX]

Tell me how those loading times will be when their servers go down

 

[Toe-Knee]

I was just trying to remember the loading times of rdr2 and was running the weren't that bad.

Then I realised I only loaded it once or twice throughout my play time and just used rest mode the rest which makes it almost instant.

Can't say I've had an issue with load times other than vanilla bloodborne.

 

[LucidFeuer]

Why the fuck would it do that?

 

[MetalSlug]

I think developers will always find a way, especially on fixed hardware platforms there will always be games that can't load fast enough.
PC you can brute force your way through load times by buying buying better hardware.

Although some times games load so fast, you end up not being able to read the loading screen information

 

[Burrito Bandito]

i stopped playing GTaV competely because of this. It has also made me stop playing BFV, where even quitting a game requires an extended loading sequence

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I think developers will always find a way, especially on fixed hardware platforms there will always be games that can't load fast enough.
PC you can brute force your way through load times by buying buying better hardware.

I have a 2080 Ti with an NVME M2 drive and many games still require long loading times. So long loading times are not going away.

 

[nowhat]

I can't say I've looked at the effects of throwing an SSD in a console

I have a 1TB SSD in my Pro (a combination of nice bonus from work + drunken online shopping after a long night of bar hopping) - is it faster than the stock drive, sure, this is especially noticeable in some open world games. Are you going to get the kind of gains you'd expect on a PC, not by far. Apparently this is due to the bus design, it's just not meant for very high throughput.

I don't expect SSDs on next gen consoles, it would make them too expensive. But some sort of hybrid solution, especially one where the developers have some control over the SSD part, would improve things considerably.

 

[ZywyPL]

Most likely yes. Loading times are determined by the CPU, controller, and storage drive, so if all three things are in check the loading times will be reduced dramatically. For example, current-gen console refreshes have a SATS3 controller, you can even mount the most expensive Samsung SSDs, but the data is still being processed by the Jaguar CPU, so there's virtually no difference between base PS4 with SATA2 and cheap SSHD drive vs Pro with SATA3 and SSD drive. Next-gens will come with high-end Ryzen CPUs, so the last puzzle will be put in place, so if you decide to put faster than stock drive into them the loading times will be reduced by A LOT. As for cloud services, as far as I know most of them are already running on SSD drives, or at least are in the process of replacing HDDs, so no limitations there, on any other parts.

 

[Shifty]

Better asynchronous loading / streaming is the most realistic approach in the near-term. Think Fromsoft games.

It's going to be a while before average gaming hardware is going to be able to snap its fingers and immediately have content loaded / unpacked in memory, so hide it behind other stuff instead (cutscenes, gameplay, etc.)

 

[PocoJoe]

Certain games I like to play become a bore just due to the simple loading times. Rockstar games like GTA V and RDR2 fall into this category. Playing this type of games are fun while they last but the obscene load times take away from my enjoyment.

I understand the scale of such games but could we see an end to extreme loadiing times soon.?

I started my gaming with commodore 64 + cassettes, it too literally 20-30mins to load a game sometimes, then after 3-5 deaths some games demanded to reload the tape.

So, after that no modern game with loading time feels nothing, imo most games load kind of fast anyway. GTA V is sometimes slow if have to reload many times, but nothing too bad

 

[PhoenixTank]

I have a 1TB SSD in my Pro (a combination of nice bonus from work + drunken online shopping after a long night of bar hopping) - is it faster than the stock drive, sure, this is especially noticeable in some open world games. Are you going to get the kind of gains you'd expect on a PC, not by far. Apparently this is due to the bus design, it's just not meant for very high throughput.

I don't expect SSDs on next gen consoles, it would make them too expensive. But some sort of hybrid solution, especially one where the developers have some control over the SSD part, would improve things considerably.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like the PS4 pro, at least, is limited to SATA II rather than SATA III. A shame but probably a sane cost cutting measure.
I agree with on SSDs being unlikely for the new consoles, but prices are coming down a lot. If there is a mid gen upgrade I think there might be a better chance there, but it'll depend on how capacities are scaling versus game size at that point.

 

[bitbydeath]

I thought we saw a significant improvement from PS3 -> PS4. Not sure if we’ll see a similar jump from PS4 -> PS5.

That said I am running more digital games this gen which could be why.

 

[Sqorin Hammerfarf]

Man, fuck the cloud.

 

[Alexa88]

I have yet to see game with worse loading times than ff xv. Especially later in the game when you are using fast travel a lot...

 

[Yugrio1212]

I think better technology in a general sense will solve the loading times, not just cloud gaming.

 

[MadAnon]

I think developers will always find a way, especially on fixed hardware platforms there will always be games that can't load fast enough.
PC you can brute force your way through load times by buying buying better hardware.

That's not true. NVMe SSDs are much faster than SATA SSDs but you see almost no benefit in-game loading times.

 

[tr1p1ex]

They can easily solve this problem.

But do you want to pay for it?

They can put another cheaper cpu in a console and more ram and have this cpu load content in the background so you never see a loading screen.

They can throw in faster drives as well.

And/or they can go back to simpler graphics that don't take as long to load.

The cloud can eliminate loading times by passing them off to another machine in the cloud.

 

[Yugrio1212]

True, they can solve it now, it is just who will buy the more expensive items and can a company survive or want to get in that section of the market.

 

[ethomaz]

That depends on developers optimizations and not direct to hardware... of course better hardware helps but load times is really tied to how you load your data in the games.

You can develop a entry games without let the user see any loading time except the inicial load of the game.

For exemple the games from Naught Dogs do load times while you are watching the cutscene so when it ends you go directly to gameplay again... that helps a lot.

Bungie do load times when you are in the open world when you are reaching near the point to enter in a new section so you don't see it (well sometimes you see if you are too fast).

Devs should start to make loading imperceptible to end-user.

 

[Claus Grimhildyr]

I use the loading time to take a beer...go to bathroom... scratch my balls ahah don't bother me so much ...

With Kingdomcome deliverance i can go out to take a coffee in a bar

Same. As long as the load times are under 3 minutes and not every 5 seconds, I am fine.

 

[Shin]

News trail leads to SSD market crash in 2020 and next-gen leaks/rumors point to 1TB SSD included in both PS5/Xbox.
Along with memory, some form of streaming, compression and a whole long lists of things it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[JimboJones]

That's not true. NVMe SSDs are much faster than SATA SSDs but you see almost no benefit in-game loading times.

You have to take Ram speed and even cpu speed into account with load times. Not just the type of storage.

I have a 2080 Ti with an NVME M2 drive and many games still require long loading times. So long loading times are not going away.

Well I never said they would go away, but I'm sure your set up gives much quicker load times than console counterparts in a lot of games.