An SSD is "a must" for Final Fantasy XVI on PC, says game director

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Using a solid-state drive is increasingly becoming a necessity for modern games. Those who've played Final Fantasy XVI on the PlayStation 5 won't be surprised to learn that, according to director and producer Naoki Yoshida, an SSD is "a must" in the upcoming PC version.

In a translated interview with Famitsu alongside Hiroshi Takai and Takeo Kujiraoka, Yoshida told Final Fantasy fans getting ready for the latest entry to land on the PC that "I would like you to prepare an SSD."

While Yoshida said details of the required PC specs would be released in due course, he did reveal that "Even if we did our best to adjust the GPU, in FF16 – a game where loading speed is critical – using the HDD would be a pain."

"Of course, we will do our best to optimise as much as possible," Yoshida added, "but we cannot overcome the hardware barrier alone, so please consider that an SSD is a must. We will announce the exact recommended specifications on another occasion."

The epic story of Final Fantasy XVI moves ever onwards.

Echoes of the Fallen is out today and The Rising Tide launches in Spring 2024. Grab the expansion pass for a special discounted price. #FF16 pic.twitter.com/o1JN5Q91sQ

– FINAL FANTASY XVI (@finalfantasyxvi) December 8, 2023

The faster storage hardware in modern consoles has been part of the reason why many PC games either require or highly recommend an SSD these days.

Assassin's Creed Mirage, Baldur's Gate 3, Forza Motorsport, Starfield, and Cyberpunk 2077 (following the update) are just some of the games that require an SSD. Expect this to become the standard for most titles in the future; we already know that the upcoming Stalker 2 requires 150GB of free SSD space.

The exact PC specs will likely be unveiled when Square Enix announces the release date for the PC version of Final Fantasy XVI. Yoshida said his team was "carefully developing" the port, so here's hoping it will be more like the Resident Evil 4 remake and less like Jedi Survivor at launch.

Thankfully, the prices of SSDs have dropped considerably in recent times, pushed even lower by an oversupply of DRAM and NAND in South Korea this year. Make sure to check out the Best Storage of 2023 feature to see our picks for the best desktop SSDs.

Final Fantasy XVI is quite a departure for the series, moving ever closer to God of War-style all-out action and further away from the RPG/party management elements of the earlier games. That hasn't stopped it from being well-received by most critics and players – this writer enjoyed it – earning the game a Metacritic score of 87 and a user score of 8.1.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101149-ssd-must-final-fantasy-xvi-pc.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Unsurprising. The writing has been on the wall for awhile, HDD for archival only.

 

[TheBigT42]

A SSD for your OS Drive and Programs is a must for ANYTHING!

 

[kira setsu]

If your "gaming" pc doesnt have an ssd of some kind at this point then you should probably just buy a console and stop waiting to play games on pc.

 

[Farkinell]

Absolutely nothing surprising about this, almost doesn’t need to be said. SSDs have been around for a long time now and prices are low for entry level models, which are fine for game storage. When games start required PCIE gen5 NVME drives then I’ll get worried.

 

[quadibloc]

I have been very much out of touch. I had not imagined that an SSD, even though it's faster, was a good idea for any computer, because one can only write so many times before it fails.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I have been very much out of touch. I had not imagined that an SSD, even though it's faster, was a good idea for any computer, because one can only write so many times before it fails.

.......I mean, its basic math man. A TLC drive, under normal use, will go 40+ years before running out of write capacity. 10GB a day on a drive with a 5-700TB write limit. Any hard drive you use is going to suffer a mechanical failure long before your SSD wears out.

And if you are wearing them out in a few years, then dear god the productivity increases from the speed would more then make up for it! Someone trying to write tens of hundreds of GB per day with HDDs will tear their hair out in frustration.

 

[kira setsu]

I have been very much out of touch. I had not imagined that an SSD, even though it's faster, was a good idea for any computer, because one can only write so many times before it fails.

An SSD is honestly the easiest and cheapest way to keep some old systems somewhat decent, got an old laptop? slap a ssd in it. got an old desktop? same thing.

I have a few old laptops that have gotten a longer life because of solid state drives, and when windows got too much then they got linux installed. you'd have to pretty much be writing and reading to the drive all day everyday to kill it, and even that may take a few years.

 

[pencea]

SSD is a must now days. if you want responsive and fast loading for everything. For the PC world, it literally has the biggest tangible difference that can be felt whatever you do when compared to mechanical hard drives.

I'm glad current consoles have it.

 

[poohbear]

Bought my 1st SSD in 2012... OCZ Vector 128gb and I was like DAYMN! SSDs are over 12 years old now...in the computer world that's centuries ago.

 

[fb020997]

I’m a freelance PC tech, and I REFUSE to repair a customer’s PC if he/she doesn’t want to have an SSD. Thankfully 98+% of my customers choose to either have their spinning rust cloned to a new SSD or want a clean install of Win10/11/macOS.