Gaming is getting bigger and better, and flash storage is the powering force

A decade is a very long time in technology. And if you happen to be in gaming, it seems to be almost a different era. Ten years ago, when a person thought of purchasing or downloading a brand new, top of the line game, the first thought that went through their minds was if their system had the processor power, graphics capacity and RAM to handle it. Fast forward to today, and it is a fair chance that, while processors, graphic cards and RAM remain important, storage has become one of gamers’ biggest concerns. Storage today is front and centre of the gaming experience.

In 2015-16, a gaming PC with about 1TB storage was considered to be good enough to meet most gaming requirements. Today, 2TB of storage is often recommended for gamers, with some experts even advocating 4TB. The reason for this is that games (in particular AAA games) are simply much bigger than they ever were. And it is not just about graphics and textures, even though they have been improving constantly. Gaming worlds are getting bigger and more realistic and the whole experience is far more immersive, with extremely detailed and high-resolution graphics.

Similarly, audio has become far more advanced, with different levels of surround sound and spatial audio, as well as audio in a wide variety of languages. The storage space needed by a game is no longer fixed either. In many cases, the storage a game needs actually increases with the number of updates it gets— some “game patches” can be very large in size.

It is not just about capacity either. All the storage in the world is of little use if it is not fast. Think of gaming storage as a library—a huge library with millions of books is of little use if you cannot find what you are looking for quickly. Similarly, having a number of games stored on a device is of no use, if you are unable to quickly access and load those games. This is where faster storage solutions, such as solid-state drives (SSDs) come into play, enabling quicker loading of game levels, textures, and models.

This is not just a matter of speedy access on a device, it is also important when the game, or parts of it, are online. The gaming world is increasingly shifting from load-based gaming (where all the game was stored on your machine) to real time streaming, especially in open-world games, where assets are streamed in real-time as players explore vast environments. Something other than an SSD could result in stuttering, delayed texture loading, and an experience that is irritating rather than immersive.

In high pressure gaming environments where every nano-second makes a difference, high speed storage makes a world of difference. Small wonder that for many AAA games, SSDs as part of the minimum system requirement. Their speed and reliability have made SSDs an integral part of gaming experience.

As gaming literally becomes bigger and enters a data-intensive era, storage is becoming the stage on which gaming performs. It supports all its elements, from graphics to audio to maps to streaming, enabling a smooth and seamless performance.

(The author is Corporate Vice President, SSD Products, Sandisk. Views are personal.)