Sony PS5 gets ability to store games on external hard drives

Since the launch of the Sony PlayStation 5 in late 2020, there has been one long pending request from customers to the company. They wanted the console to support external hard drive so that they can install more games.

Graphics-rich gaming titles come in huge sizes and some require an average of 40GB-to-50GB install space. Guess what, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Launch Edition takes up massive '105 GB minimum' storage.

Even the 1 Terabyte (1,024 GB) storage will not be enough for long and as it will get consumed in a few months time.

It looks like Sony has listened to the prayers and has released a software update to the PS5 that enables the console to connect to external storage. However, there is one caveat. The company says that users cannot directly play the game on PS5 with the gaming titles stored on an external disk. Users have to transfer the game back to the console's native storage to play.

The company added that the console supports faster data transfer speed and won't take much time for the aforementioned procedure. It has opened a support page for consumers (here).

Also, the company said going forward, PS4 and PS5 players can Share Play together while chatting in parties (friends group). This means PS5 console users can let their friends on PS4 consoles view their game screen, or even try out the PS5 games through Share Play, and vice versa.

The new update also improves the Game Base menu. The latter offers quicker access to important content and features. Users will be able to switch between Parties and Friends to start chatting easily than before. Also, he/she can disable game chat, adjust players’ volume, customize the game library, new trophy settings, and stats screen.

Sony plans to bring new features to the PlayStation app including the ability to join a multiplayer session on PS5 from the app, manage the PS5 console storage, compare trophy collections with friends, and sort and filter products shown in the PlayStation Store.

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