PS5 game updates will be much more streamlined, so say goodbye to 'copying' delays

PS5 will cut down on copying delays that keep you from playing a game even after its updates are done downloading.

Sony has demonstrated how PS5's internal SSD drive will cut down on load times in games, and in an online presentation today system architect Mark Cerny explained how it will also minimize the frustrations inherent to updating your games - especially games with frequent patches, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

"I'm sure many of you have noticed that after a patch downloads, the PlayStation 4 will sometimes take a long time to install the patch," Cerny said. "That's because when just part of the file has been changed, the new data can be downloaded pretty quickly. But before the game boots up, a brand new file has to be constructed that includes the changed portion. Otherwise every change would add a seek [which is time a hard drive spends physically finding the new data] or two."

"Even so, you can occasionally see this happening on game titles. They start to hitch once they get patched enough. With an SSD though, no seeks. So no need to make brand new files with the changes incorporated into them. Which means no installs as you know them today."

Put another way, if you've ever noticed that your PS4 spends more time "copying" patches than downloading them, PS5 ain't gonna do that. That almost sounds worthy of making the jump to the next generation by itself.

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar+.