Sony has reiterated that the PlayStation 5 won’t support storage expansion at launch, even though it has a dedicated internal M.2 SSD slot. It will, however, be activated with a future update, although, there’s no ETA for when that might happen. The confirmation comes from Sony, which released a statement to The Verge on Thursday, stating that the feature “is reserved for a future update”.
It is worth noting that the company had earlier indicated that the storage expansion facility on the PS5 might not be active from day-1. In a video posted on the official PlayStation YouTube channel back in March, PlayStation hardware architect, Mark Cerny, said that support for SSD expansion will only be added later. “It’d be great if that happened by launch, but it’s likely to be a bit past it, so please hold off on getting that M.2 drive until you hear from us”, he said.
According to Cerny, Sony will take the extra time to ensure the compatibility of all SSD drives with Sony’s I/O controller. That’s because not all M.2 SSDs are fast enough to keep up with the PS5, nor thin enough to fit into its SSD bay, he said. However, neither Cerny then nor the Sony spokesperson now has officially revealed a possible ETA for the update.
What’s even more disconcerting is that according to a number of SSD manufacturers contacted by The Verge, Sony’s compatibility testing program hasn’t even kicked off yet, which means it may be a while before the update hits the airwaves. There might not be timeline for that yet, but let’s hope that it happens sooner rather than later.
