A lot of modern AAA games require an SSD, actually.
On top of my head: Cyberpunk, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Space remake, Starfield, Baulder’s Gate 3, Palworld, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Forza Horizon 4 and 5 don’t say they require an SSD I think, but when I had it on my hard drive any cars that did over 250kph caused significant world loading issues, as in I’d fall out of the world because it didn’t load the map.
If a game isn’t fully playable without an SSD, then I consider it a requirement.
Ever try playing Perfect Dark without an Expansion Pak back in the day? It’ll technically work, but you’ll get locked out of 90% of the game, including the campaign. Similar thing with SSDs today.
Both Cyberpunk and BG3 work flawlessly on the external USB hard drive that I use. The loading times suffer a bit, but not to an unplayable degree, not even close
Indeed, as others have said this isn’t a hard requirement. Anyone with a handheld (e.g. Steam Deck) playing off a uSD card uses a device that’s an order of magnitude slower for sequential I/O
A lot of modern AAA games require an SSD, actually.
On top of my head:
Cyberpunk, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Space remake, Starfield, Baulder’s Gate 3, Palworld, Ratchet & Clank: Rift ApartForza Horizon 4 and 5 don’t say they require an SSD I think, but when I had it on my hard drive any cars that did over 250kph caused significant world loading issues, as in I’d fall out of the world because it didn’t load the map.
Forza Horizon 4 actually does include an SSD in its requirements. Thank you for reminding me about that.
It does technically work without it, just don’tgo over A class, don’t do sprints and there was 1 normal circuit that’s a tad big in a forest bit
If a game isn’t fully playable without an SSD, then I consider it a requirement.
Ever try playing Perfect Dark without an Expansion Pak back in the day? It’ll technically work, but you’ll get locked out of 90% of the game, including the campaign. Similar thing with SSDs today.
Cyberpunk literally has an HDD mode, I play it of an HDD every day.
With sufficient ram to load everything in you’ll just have longer load times, no hdd hitchiness
Both Cyberpunk and BG3 work flawlessly on the external USB hard drive that I use. The loading times suffer a bit, but not to an unplayable degree, not even close
Indeed, as others have said this isn’t a hard requirement. Anyone with a handheld (e.g. Steam Deck) playing off a uSD card uses a device that’s an order of magnitude slower for sequential I/O
It’s not a hard requirement.
But it is a hard drive requirement.
I can personally guarantee that it is a hard requirement for Spider-Man and Ratchet
That’s not how computers work, but sure bro.
Okay well try telling that to my computer when the games wouldn’t run without constantly freezing to load assets every few seconds.
They stream data from it while you play, so if you don’t have an SSD you’ll get pauses in game play.
Sure, you might.
But Baulder’s Gate 3 for example, which claims to require an SSD in it’s system requirements runs just fine on a HDD.
It’s just the developer making sure you get optimal performance.