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Sony PS5 update enables external storage for next-gen games, with a caveat

(The Washington Post illustration; Sony)

Beginning April 14, PlayStation 5 owners will finally be able to offload their next-gen titles to external storage. The update, announced Tuesday, addresses in part what many saw as the console’s biggest shortcoming after launching in November of 2020.

With only 667 gigabytes of space available on the PS5′s solid state drive and next-gen games averaging around 50-60 GBs, users often had to remove any PS5 versions of games they weren’t actively playing and then redownload them if they wanted to play them again. Now, users can keep them on a compatible USB drive. Still, they will need to migrate them back onto the console to play them.

In a blog post Tuesday, Sony noted that the migration process between the console and external drive is faster than re-downloading the games. Users cannot, however, play PS5 games off the external drive, as they can with PS4 titles. The blog post also noted that PS5 games cannot be downloaded directly to the external drive.

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Sony has stated previously that the console will support additional storage via internal M.2 drives in the future. As such, this update is something of a stopgap that lessens, but doesn’t eliminate, the inconvenience of the PS5′s limited storage space. Some of the console’s early titles have already run into storage issues, with “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” requiring over 200 GBs of space when players also include the “Warzone” battle royale mode. Other titles, like “Hitman 3” and “Destiny 2,” eat up over 100 GBs, according to a March article from Game Rant.

Other features of the update include cross-generation Share Play, allowing PS5 and PS4 users to share their screen with one another. The update also incorporates a new way to quickly disable in-game chat or reduce the volume of a player’s voice in a chat if they don’t know how (or just refuse) to adjust their microphone settings.

Once developers opt in, the PS5 will also now allow users to pre-download all game updates, eliminating the time users must wait before enjoying new content.

Sony also announced several new features for the PlayStation app. You can read the full update details here.

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