Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC Doesn't Actually Need an SSD

A little surprised but I'm not overly concerned. This was a fantastic game to show off this generation to people who were on the fence. It has served it's purpose, let it ride off into the sunset on PC.

There is a difference between being able to put a shirt on and looking good in a shirt, most of the time clothes that aren't your size make your body look worst than what it actually is.

The point here is ... it's obvious the ssd thing is marketing but the fact that a game "can run" on some hardware first of all doesn't mean it can actually run because i have seen computers with the minimum not running games (every computer is different because there's a lot of distributors), and second the fact that it runs doesn't mean you are going to enjoy it. Games are designed in a specific way to be experienced in a specific way even more so for games made with console as their objective. When your workplace is a specific architecture you design your games with that in mind and your vision comes to life because the architecture is the way it is. There is no lies in there from a developer standpoint.

This was a great game but they definitely oversold it, in all the trailers and gameplay they made you think you could switch worlds or levels in seconds leveraging the power of the almighty SSD and it’s not like that at all, those transitions we saw are either cutscenes or just a level within a level (like going down a pipe in Mario games), but you still have to load every level and world albeit a really short load on PS5, but I see how this game doesn’t really require the SSD as they made us think.

they lied to hype up the ps5. plain and simple. we are still waiting to be wowed by the ps5 and we are almost half way into its life cycle. nothing even comes close to the unreal engine demo that was presented to us prior to the ps5 launch... don't falsely advertise and create unrealistic expectations if you have no intention of delivering.

The biggest issue with this is we are coming to a point we can’t believe anything Sony tells us, since they keep blatantly lying.

I still like most of their games, and will continue to play them (after they hit a deep discount) but can’t trust anything they try to tell us.

Edit: no, consoles are not special, the game would had worked on a PS4 had they tried, and no, lack of an NVME drive won’t change graphics or frame rate… why would anyone think that??? That’s not how things work…the drive would at best impact the loading times. Maybe the fake transition between dimensions will be a bit longer, but no, the game won’t perform any worse simply because of the HDD. Why so many feel the need to blindly defend lies?

It can run at minimum on an HDD. I bet it absolutely runs like crap! Anyone who’s saying Sony lied doesn’t understand how PC specs work. If you’ve played A Rift Apart you’ll know it couldn’t have been achieved on HDD. Instant load times and 0 hiccups. Which HDD where?

The game goes right into gameplay from startup in about 17 seconds. No way HDD could do that. Anyway, I’m sure they could’ve made the game play on an HDD. But no way it could’ve played the way it played on an HDD.

Isn't this the last PS5 game Sony released outside of TLOU Remake (which is essentially a PS3 game with very minor gameplay changes)?

It's been over 2 years

So many people on this comment section discovering that companies sometimes lie in their marketing. Shocking.

Well yeah because unlike consoles most PC's are powerful enough to brute force their way through any issue lacking a SSD might cause. On consoles though it just wouldn't be possible without a SSD.

@Porco On consoles this wouldn't be possible without a SSD, PC's are generally more powerful and can make up the difference elsewhere if using a HDD. As for that Unreal demo well no game apart from Fortnite is using UR5 as the UR5 games are currently in development as thats how it goes, you didn't expect Devs to just drop AAA UR5 games 6 months after launch right? Anyway R&C and Horizon FW are visually beyond anything else right now except maybe Forza, if you think their visuals are underwhelming then your standards are too high.

Shouldn't we, oh I don't know, wait to see how it plays first, b/c Cyberpunk 2077 supposedly ran on a PS4 before Sony started issuing refunds. 🤷‍♂️

I don't expect R&C to run that poorly, but I've been PC gaming for 30 years and sometimes those "minimum requirement" specs give you a nice 5 fps slide show. 😝

@DennisReynolds are you suggesting that the min specs to run the game on pc are better than the ps5? (they are not). that explanation doesn't quite add up. sony made it quite clear — an ssd was required to run the game. that has turned out to be false.

It's not a full lie like most people say
If you want to enjoy the game in max settings and RT you need SSD plain and simple - that was the PS5 version
but technically you can make very low quality version 720p res without any RT and voila it works on HDD , why? because you don't need such high bandwidth anymore duh

even Starfield would work on HDD but they added requirement for SSD - how well? that's the question probably not as good

@TrickyDicky99
Did you forget about Horizon forbidden west , GT7 and God of War Ragnarok
that's a year , not 2

Actually they didn't really lie. And I love reading the comments of the uninformed.

It is true that this game can't run without a ssd.
(At the time the game came out)

What people are missing is technology in PC's have come a long way since the release.

Its going to be the first game which users Direct Storage.

What this actually does has nothing to do with the hard drive, its actually very clever. Nixxies has done an amazing job.

GPU-driven DirectStorage is supported on Ratchet and Clank, the idea being that the decompressing the data from storage is handled by the graphics hardware rather than the CPU. However, it seems that the port will carry out internal bandwidth and compute benches on the fly - and then decide which PC component works best for the decompression tasks. So, for example, let's say you have a highly performant CPU like a Core i9 13900K, but you have a less capable graphics card. The game may decide that instead of using GPU resources, it'll switch to the thread-heavy CPU instead. (Qoute from EuroGamer)

What is surprising many is that at the absolute low-end, it is possible to run Ratchet and Clank without an SSD, even though it's still recommended. This has led some to believe that prior claims from Insomniac that the game couldn't work without the PS5 SSD are erroneous - but I think it's fairly safe to say that the game as delivered on PS5 won't work on a mechanical hard drive. It's all about scalability, something that Nixxes values highly in its ports. (Eurogamer Qoute)

So insomniac wasn't wrong or lied. It quite simply cannot run on a normal HHD and get the same level of performance you get on PS5 and without using new tech on the oc side.
it actually has to be passed onto the fastest piece of tech inside your pc

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-df-weekly-how-will-ratchet-and-clank-pc-handle-the-ps5s-ssd-requirement

Very good read

@Bez87 Right so i'm kinda right then as i thought.

I took quite a lot of flack for suggesting there was nothing in this game that couldn't be done without the SSD...

The simple truth is that the levels are all pretty small and most of the transitions between worlds are entirely scripted which means you can just load them into memory ahead of time and therefore no need for an ssd.

After the game starts and maybe between levels there might be a longer load but otherwise it will be identical.

Edit: for clarity, I believe the way it was done on PS5 was indeed what we were told, I just think there were other ways to achieve the same results.

@SoulChimera what's the falsehood here exactly?

@IOI the way PS5 ran it, it can't be done without an SSD. In PC you don't need it if you're running 30 fps/720p no ray tracing and low settings

@Bez87 yeah people just trying to paint Sony as liars here when clearly looking at the requirements proves them correct

@Tharsman looking at these requirements, Sony was correct. Look at it before jumping to conclusions 👍

@DennisReynolds your pretty much spot on.
What some people just can't grasp is the difference between a PC and a Console.

Like you have said, a PC can perform 100 more different tasks than a Console can perform there are many more ways around certain limitations and different software always coming out to make performance better for pc. And this is where Nixxies was a great buy for Sony, they are the best at porting games and using the inner workings of a pc to get the best out of a game.

Like you said they are using minimum spec PC's to brute force the game to work in a different way with lower res probably and other limitations.

The PS5, the developers know exactly what they have to work with and with that means they can try every trick in the book to perfect the performance.
Unlike PC each and everyone of us has a very unique build and will have different levels of power in each component.

The game will run best on high end ssd pcs.
The game however on the minimum spec pc side will not run the game at the same level ps5 can do it because of the work arounds they will have to come up with.

@PCPS4XB Exactly people think tech doesn't move on it seems, on the PC there are software which can mimic something your pc doesn't have to get the game running but probably at a lower spec game.

@Wheatly But thats reality. There are always other ways. Its finding them.

What Insomniac is referring to when they said it cant be done. Is the settings the game is set to at the high standard on PS5.

The ray tracing element cant be done, the 4K resolutions cant be done, 60fps cant be done, without the SSD.

There is no way that the game we played on PS5 can be played at the same settings on a PC with a HDD.

This is why Nixxies is now using every trick and software the pc has to get it to run. But stress that a SSD is highly recommended.

@Bez87 yes it can.

It is simply the method they used to make it work on PS5 that couldn't be done on PC.

There were always other ways round it and it isn't even complicated. You just need to put enough memory in the machine to load enough information to allow the drive time.

But given R&C is a small scope game I imagine 16gb would be way more than needed.

I look forward to seeing how it's handled. My gut suspicion is that the game will just spend an uncomfortable amount of time in the "warp" which you barely see on the ps5. If they have put more work in, there is also the possibility of streaming stuff in just in time. The game knows when you are likely to jump, it's not as if you can jump anywhere at any time. Smoke and mirrors.

When the 2 competitors released the only 2 things ps5 was better and faster than the competition was the Ssd and the wifi. So all the marketing eventually did go to the ssd, they had to saw everyone that the ssd was the more important thing for the generation. It's not a lie, it's just marketing stuff, everyone will little hardware knowledge from the pc's tech knew that this is all marketing from Sony. Even Digital Foundry did a test and put a slower SSD on ps5 with 3500mb/s R/W and eventually it didn't make a difference back then witch shows that even the blistering speed o ps5 ssd didn't used 100% in rift apart.

The guy from Travelers Tales proved this ages ago.

Gotta love people being outraged before the game has come out to see how it runs. But it's the internet and it's more important to be outraged, so here we are.

I mean yeah. Most games can be downgraded to work on weaker hardware. I'm sure they could have done some kind of version for PS4 if they really wanted to. This is why I don't get people talking about cross-gen games being "held back". Almost any game could be made to run on weaker hardware in some gimped form. Just look at some of the PS4 games on Switch. It doesn't mean that the PS5 version of a cross-gen game has necessarily been held back in some way.

Whoot here we go again..

Does this really matter?

Also they have said they are loading the game directly into gpu ram. Sony shares is memory so it probably uses the ssd as extra ram to load things quickly.

Also, windows has the ability to use things like resizable bus, meaning things can effectively use the ram and gpu memory so who is to say they simply aren’t using this also?

Secondly, we haven’t even seen what it runs like on a normal hdd.

Thirdly, do we even fall for marketing bs anymore?

@stefan771 I was about to say the same thing - Jon Burton was doing this "two worlds running at the same time" trick back in the days of the PS3! (Lego Star Wars 3)

Shove a decent SSD in the PS4 Pro and be surprised by what a difference it makes. R&C looks and smells like a PS4 game with an extra layer of Mr Sheen polish.

@Arxagelos As for the WiFi, why is the PS5 so slow at downloading and can only download one thing at a time? Its 4father performed so much better at that basic task?

Stuff like this makes me wonder what direction gaming would've taken if instead of deciding to release PS5/Series X|S, Sony/Microsoft instead chose to keep PS4/XB1 permanently as the most powerful hardware.

Very much doubt a standard hdd on a pc allows fast loading in 2-3 seconds , as a pc owner

@Grumblevolcano Games would've been very similar - in fact, they still are!

One thing to keep in mind in PC gaming is highly scalable compared to console gaming. I remember videos of Witcher 3 looking absolutely horrendous yet kind of playable due to tinkering with the settings.

What I'm trying to say is just because you can play it without an SSD doesn't mean you necessarily should. Let's wait to see the inevitable videos that will pop up online first before pulling the false advertising card yeah?

If the point of journalism is to inform or help people make better choices, this isn’t working.

People don’t read the full article so when your headline basically says “Sony lied to you” and then the article text is weirdly nuanced yeah, you’ve set people’s expectations all wrong. And what for? Engagement? Clicks? Is this fun? Meaningful? I just don’t understand.

@PCPS4XB I was being sarcastic. Emulating the usual online forum craziness whenever something like this pops up. I assumed I had gone ridiculous enough for it to be clearly sarcasm.

I think most people realised that it was just marketing spin and it could run on a HDD, just not the way that they intended it to. They've probably figured out some way to get it running reasonably okay on HDD for PC but it is a minimum requirement and they do still recommend an SSD, even on the minimum requirements. They have also have highlighted that it won't run as they intended so I don't think it's fair to say they have lied on anything.

@SoulChimera oh chill out.

I'll pick this up on Steam for Black Friday for 20 bucks and load it on a SD card. It's weird that the SteamDeck is the only console this generation not BSing it's way thru everything.

@sentiententity I was being sarcastic.

Looks like it’s been removed for “trolling”. Strange, it was very clearly sarcasm.

Why would someone bring up Counter Strike on the PS3 as a serious comparison to this? Then end it by saying they are going to set fire to their PS5 over it. Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Clearly shows the state of forums if people thought I was being serious. Absolutely bizarre.

Lighten up people. It’s supposed to be a fun hobby.

@koffing my thoughts exactly.

@Petto All those games are PS4 games

@Petto Horizon forbidden west , GT7 and God of War Ragnarok are all PS4 games… Ratchet and Clank was the last true PS5 exclusive beside TLOUS

@Bez87 This is actually the second game. Forspoken used Direct storage.

8k.

I rest my case

@Bez87 VERY important detail not mentioned in the article at all.

Nothing but a marketing gimmicks every time they claim something is “only possible on PS5”.

I mean if you want a lousy experience sure. By all means. run off an HDD.

Time to leave PS4 behind. It had a great run.

Only possible with the PS5 new SSD hey Insomniac 😂😂😂

Basically, yes, you can use a HDD, but the desired experience that Insomniac desires for this game requires a SSD.

It’s like, many different games could be downgraded to work on worse hardware, but that’s not what its creators actually want or envisioned, but they have to do what their bosses say. R&C could probably be downgraded to work on a PS3, but it’s technically not the actual vision of the game.

@sammyb @tharsman

@OmegaStriver you haven't played the game on PC on HDD to know "the desired experience that Insomniac desires", yet you're saying it as a fact. I'm old enough to remember when Sony was selling me CGI movies saying it was in-game graphics

Maybe R&C could do some of the dimension-swapping without an SSD, but regardless, being able to play games with barely any loading is fantastic. There's no way I could go back to the pre-ssd era after being spoiled with the speed of the new-gen consoles.

When they say they recommend SSD, do they mean SATA or nvme?

@saffeqwe Apparently THE desired version of R&C was the PS5 version and if a pc with HDD doesn’t match it, then it’s not the desired version.

@GymratAmarillo But Sony said that the games was only possible thanks to the PS5 SSD, so... yeah it is a lie.

Think it’s fair to say the statement by Marcus Smith is a Sony sponsored marketing one, and probably limited to a world where only the PS4 and PS5 exist.

Lame manufactured drama for pendants who like to argue about anything they come across.

@OmegaStriver no, no, no. You're saying " desired experience that Insomniac desires requires a SSD." "requires a SSD". You're saying it as a fact. You haven't played the game, you know nothing to make those statements.