PS5 game sizes revealed — here's why you'll want external storage

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PS5 games could chew through SSD storage very quickly

Demon's Souls Remake
(Image credit: Sony)

Sony’s PS5 storage might be superfast but the 825GB SSD is likely to fill up rather fast judging by some of the install sizes of upcoming games.  

While there aren’t a lot of install sizes officially announced for incoming PS5 games, we have heard that the Demon’s Souls Remake will measure in at a huge 66GB, And if you want the full Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Launch Edition, you’re looking at an install size of 105GB of SSD space; that’s a hefty chunk of the PS5’s built-in storage. Even if you just opt for Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which is a standalone expansion to the full Spider-Man game, you’re looking at giving up 50GB of SSD space.

Games have been getting bigger seemingly every year. But then storage for games consoles has increased in turn; both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X come with 1TB storage drives. 

But the PS5 comes with less stage that the PS4 Pro, albeit in the form of a significantly faster and cutting-edge SSD. And with large game install sized, it looks like you'll not be installing large libraries of games on a launch PS5 consoles, unless Sony gets clever with data compression. 

PS5 storage will be expandable with off-the-shelf SSD, But these will need to be PCIe 4.0 SSDs and be certified by Sony. None are available at the time of writing, and going by how much the Xbox Series X expandable storage costs, we can expect such SSD upgrades to be rather expensive. 

Sucking up storage

Eurogamer crunched some numbers and worked out that an install of Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Launch Edition will take up nearly 13 percent of the PS5’s SSD. If other games follow suit, and we’ve seen the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Season 4 come with huge install sizes, then that'll be bad news for the PS5's SSD space. 

That’s not a huge problem if you have a very fast broadband connection to download large games in a reasonable amount of time. But if you have a slow connection, you’ll need to also have a rather large amount of patience if you want to play next-generation games. 

Demon's Souls Remake

(Image credit: Sony)

The Xbox Series X will come with a 1TB SSD, which, if it also has games with large install sizes, will also fill up rather quickly. 

We’ll know more about the next-generation console SSD situation when they launch in November. The Xbox Series X will launch worldwide on November 10, while the PS5 will launch on November 12 in the U.S. and other regions, while the U.K., Europe, and others will need to wait until November 19. 

Pre-orders for PS5 are now live, as are pre-orders for the Xbox Series X and Series S. But the stock has been selling out very fast, so be prepared to wait for pre-orders to be replenished.

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.