In an interesting new video published by Wired, PlayStation architect Mark Cerny reflected upon the PlayStation 5’s design and development process, revealing that Sony held numerous meetings with game developers to brainstorm ideas, and “understand a bit about what helps them and what just gets in their way.”
Cerny revealed that Sony had been receiving requests for SSDs all the way back during the PS4 era, and named Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney as one of many industry professionals who were concerned about being held back by slow hard drives. Developers pushed Sony for an NVMe SSD with a read speed of at least 1 GB per second.
“Tim Sweeney, who is the founder of Epic Games, said hard drives were holding the industry back,” Cerny recalled. Apparently, Sweeney referred to the older technology as “rusty spinning media.” “Developers asked for an NVME SSD with at least 1 GB per second of read speed, and we looked at that and we decided to go maybe five to ten times that speed,” Cerny continued.
Cerny added that he prefers “brutal” meetings with developers because they tend to be the most productive and result in a “stronger console.”
“I’m looking for developers that give me the hardest time, and ones who really have strong opinions about what it is that they need to make the game that they’ve been dreaming of,” he said. “Those are just brutal meetings to be in, but they’re good to have because at the end of the day, you’re making a stronger console.”
Watch the full video below.
