Upgrading the storage will be possible by simply taking one of the face plates off and inserting an M.2 drive into the expansion bay. Though Sony hasn’t specifically mentioned what drives will be compatible, it is likely that the drive will need to at least meet the PCIe 4.0 standard. Mark Cerny from Sony mentioned last March (in the video below) that PCIe 3.0 drives couldn’t match up to the console’s specifications.
The PS5 currently uses 825 GB of soldered NVMe storage. Around 160 GB of that is already taken by the operating system itself, leaving the user only 667 GB or so for games, apps, movies, etc. In a day and age where many modern AAA titles take upwards of 50 GB or more, it doesn’t leave much for a library, especially for owners of the digital edition who can’t make use of Blu-ray discs. This problem will soon be eliminated in the summer update.
While Microsoft has already made storage expansion possible on the Xbox Series X|S, the problem is it uses a proprietary connection, and currently the only drive that’s supported is the Seagate 1 TB drive, which currently retails on Amazon for $215. (As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.) This costs about $40 more than the average price for a 4th-gen PCIe M.2 drive.
While needing to take the face plate off and installing an M.2 drive isn’t quite as convenient as simply inserting a USB drive, at least PS5 owners can now be assured that they can install the latest Call of Duty to a second drive if the soldered storage is maxed out. (Although, it’s still possible to back up and play backwards-compatible PS4 titles via a USB flash drive or hard drive.)
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