PS4 questions

[Cloudy147]

Hi all,

We are very (very!) casual gamers. I have a PS1 Classic currently, and my daughter likes to play Tekken 3 with me. I thought it might be fun to upgrade to PS4 with Tekken 7 as I'd like to get a Blu Ray player for our play room, and the PS4 can do both.

I'm new to PS4's though and just wondered if someone could help me with regards a question about the Hard Drive. What's the point of it exactly? From what I can tell, you can buy physical games or you can download them from the PS Store. The latter I understand, but if I buy a physical game, can it be copied to the hard drive for fast loading times, or do you have to put the disk in? The reason I ask is that I like the convenience of having everything on the hard drive, but the games are much more expensive from the online store (Tekken is £40 for example, but the disc version is less than a tenner on eBay!).

Also can you buy classic games, like the old PS1/PS2 games and download them to the hard drive from the store at all? I don't want anything subscription based, as we don't play enough.

Thanks in advance!

[Steven_RW]

Hi - the HDD is used to partially/mostly install a game even if you own the disc.

Buy games second hand from CEX or gumtree or whatever at a fraction of their online PSN cost or the new cost. Play them then sell them on.

You can also buy your PS4 second hand. I'd buy a PS4 pro as they aren't really that expensive second hand if you follow the ads for a couple of weeks.

YOu can buy some of the old games like you mention digital if you so want.

PS4 is a great market at the moment. SO many people finally getting their PS5 and then selling on their PS4 for a fraction of the price.

If you really want to keep the budget tight just buy the cheapest, reasonable condition PS4 Slim. SHould get one at about £100, may even get one much cheaper if you hold out. The original launch shape PS4 is a pretty old console nowadays so I wouldnt buy one of these if I had a choice, though they often appear as the cheapest on the 2nd hand market.

Cheers

[sjg]

Almost all games have patches that have to get stored on the hard disk, and mostly games copy data off the game disc for quicker access. Buy physical versions of games and you need to have the disc in the drive to play it.

Worth keeping an eye on the digital shop though, there’s often sales and you can get some brilliant games for less than a fiver.

+1 for the slim. Small, quiet, cheap.

[Brainpox]

Things have moved on a lot from 30 years ago. PS4 doesn't play anything off the disc. File sizes are too large and transfer speeds from Blu-ray too slow. If you go online there will be a patch to update the game to remove bugs/add features etc. The disc is just a key to play the data on the hard drive.

If you download a digital copy of a game, that key is tied to your account and console rather than the disc. The account key lets you play on multiple Playstations if you use your account, and the console key is your primary console and allows all accounts on that console to access the game.

[Jasandjules]

May as well go for the PS5? Get an SSD with super fast loading times etc...

[MCBrowncoat]

I'd just be aware of the size of the hard drive and the space games (can) take up.

For instance, my 500gb PS4, which is quite an old one, actually currently has 408.5gb of space.

I've currently got 86gb spare - at some point I must have deleted some apps to make space.

310gb of that is taken up by applications - that is non-game apps like Prime and Netflix and game data you need to make the game run

105.5gb of that space - so about a quarter of the total hard drive - is taken up by Red Dead Redemption alone!

64.4 GB is taken up by Fallout 4

Meanwhile, something like Persona 5 - which isn't exactly a small game - takes up just 20gb

So sounds obvious but depending on how many and what your downloading you might fill it up quick, so you might want to consider a model with a larger drive or even getting an external drive

[Bullett]

Also consider Playstation Plus, needed for online but it's also a sort of Netflix for Playstation allowing you to download and play loads of games.

[Donbot]

You can buy one from CEX for not much over £100 and get a 2 year warranty with it. Though I've not heard of PS4 / XBOX1 consoles being unreliable for that generation.

[coldel]

I bought an external HDD and plugged it in as a backup to my 500gb PS4 which Ive had for years now.
I think its a 4TB one so its pretty easy to just have a stack of games on the machine without having to remove older ones etc.

[blue_haddock]

On the subject of games taking up huge amounts of disk space, Gran Turismo took up massive amounts of space from memory even on my 1TB PS4.

i can remeber thinking on a 500GB version it would take up most of the space.

[Cloudy147]

Thankyou all for your replies, really appreciate it.

I wouldn't have many games to be honest, so I think the standard hard drive would be fine. I'm thinking Tekken, Red Dead 2, Ridge Racer 2, Roblox and (maybe) another racing game. That's probably about all we'll have.

We have a Nintendo Switch as well and that has Assassin's Creed on there plus Need for Speed and Cruis'n'blast, so i've got my other two genre's covered on there.

I see that Argos still sell PS4s new, so I might stump for a sparkling new one, but if not CEX seems like the place to go!

Thanks again!

[coldel]

Dont underestimate the space needed for installs. 500gb doesn't mean you have 500gb of space (as mentioned above its more like 400gb)
Red Dead 2 needs 150gb to install (100gb for the game and 50gb for the installation process if buying it online)
If you end up getting a PS Plus pack to play your games online you will get hundreds of free games on offer...

[DamnKraut]

Like already mentioned, get a PS4Pro, the non-pro version is a bit long in the tooth by now. 1 TB should be sufficient in terms of hard drive space. If you feel like spending, replace the HDD with a 2.5" SSD. Cost me sth like 25 quid, just keep checking for special offers on SSDs.