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PlayStation 4 revealed | News | Edge Online

 

Playstation 4 Revealed

 

Development sources with working knowledge of both next generation consoles have told us that PlayStation 4 will be more powerful than the next Xbox, will ship with a redesigned controller and launch by the end of the year in Japan and the US. PlayStation 4’s European launch will follow in early 2014.

 

Sony is set to reveal its next PlayStation on Wednesday February 20th at an event dubbed ‘see the future’. Sony Computer Entertainment released a teaser video last night to announce the event. Below, our sources revealed what to expect from PlayStation 4.

 

The controller

 

Sources close to the hardware have revealed to us that PS4 will ship with a redesigned controller which is the same size as an existing DualShock but features a small touchpad in place of the existing Select, Start and PS buttons. The tech is based on Vita’s rear touchpad, and is similarly responsive in use.

 

A new Share button on the controller will, when pressed, launch a new feature that will allow screenshots and video to be distributed online. The PS4 hardware will continually record the most recent 15 minutes of onscreen action (with no processing penalty, claims our source), which users will then be able to edit and broadcast via the Internet.

 

The launch

 

We’re told that PlayStation 4 will launch in Japan and the US by Christmas, with a Euro rollout following in early 2014, the delay attributed to the complexities involved in European distribution. Alongside the console, Sony will also introduce a new, improved iteration of its PlayStation Eye peripheral, which remains compatible with the PlayStation Move controller. Move will be available at launch, but it’s not clear yet whether it will be bundled with the hardware.

 

The specification

 

Sony has already earned an enormous amount of goodwill among studios working with PS4 development hardware. Privately, Sony representatives have conceded that the company made a mistake in creating such esoteric architecture for PS3, and its strategy for PS4 gives developers more opportunities this time around, notably because the hardware is much more PC-like in its makeup than PS3.

 

We have confirmed with sources that recently leaked tech specs are accurate. Though Durango devkits offer 8GB of DDR3 RAM, compared to Orbis’s 4GB, Sony’s GDDR5 solution is capable of moving data at 176 gigabytes per second, which should eliminate the sort of bottlenecks that hampered PS3 game performance. Importantly, we’ve learned that Sony has told developers that it is pushing for the final PS4 RAM to match up to Microsoft’s 8GB.

 

Both platforms are driven by eight-core AMD CPUs clocked at 1.6GHz, with Microsoft opting for a D3D11.x GPU from an unknown source and Sony utilising a more capable solution in AMD’s ‘R10XX’ architecture, alongside the so-called ‘Liverpool’ system-on-chip.

 

It’s clear Sony has designed a system that, on paper, outperforms Microsoft’s next Xbox. One source familiar with both platforms tells us that in real terms Sony’s console is “slightly more powerful” and “very simple to work with”.

 

Ultimately, the performance differences between the two consoles will have as much bearing on multiplatform releases as the differences between PS3 and 360 – very little – but Sony will be expecting big-budget firstparty releases such as the PS4 Uncharted sequel to demonstrate its console’s superiority.

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Been keeping an eye/ear out for the this very thing since I first heard about Orbis, and Durango to a lesser sense.

 

The devkit leaks have become far more consistent in their content over the past couple of months, so I reckon we must be very close to the final product now.

 

As a PlayStation fan(boy), it's good to see that Sony are actually getting a leg up on Microsoft this time round as far as reveals and potential release dates are concerned. I'm sure Microsoft will also be launching their new console by the end of this year as well.

 

However, I can't help but wonder if this announcement is being made now to also get a leg up on Valve's Steam Box, which I believe could be the major player in the gaming/entertainment market over the next few years.

 

Worth noting that the number 4 is an unlucky number in Japan, so many believe that we may just come to know this new console as, The PlayStation. No matter its name, I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do, before eventually getting my hands on one on release day.

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Been keeping an eye/ear out for the this very thing since I first heard about Orbis, and Durango to a lesser sense.

 

The devkit leaks have become far more consistent in their content over the past couple of months, so I reckon we must be very close to the final product now.

 

As a PlayStation fan(boy), it's good to see that Sony are actually getting a leg up on Microsoft this time round as far as reveals and potential release dates are concerned. I'm sure Microsoft will also be launching their new console by the end of this year as well.

 

However, I can't help but wonder if this announcement is being made now to also get a leg up on Valve's Steam Box, which I believe could be the major player in the gaming/entertainment market over the next few years.

Worth noting that the number 4 is an unlucky number in Japan, so many believe that we may just come to know this new console as, The PlayStation. No matter its name, I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do, before eventually getting my hands on one on release day.

 

I don't think it ever will be, mainly because Steam have run into a lot of trouble of late. Microsoft and Sony's investment in their next gen consoles is testament to the durability of the home console as opposed to cloud gaming.

 

However - Sony's acquisition of Gaikai (which was said to generally have better prospects than Valve) a while back shows that their future consoles will incorporate Cloud gaming too. Since they bought Gaikai the company has been largely silent and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS4 offers cloud gaming services out of the box.

 

The problem with new players like Steam and On Live is that for them to enter the race they're going to need serious clout. Their current offerings aren't enough to convince a large enough user base to switch in my opinion. The gaming industry is heavily reliant on the developers (what is point of a console with no games?) many of whom have close and expensive ties to the dominant players in Sony and Microsoft.

 

I just think the SteamBox (and the similar OnLive system) is the wrong way for these companies to go. Who want's a third console to play games they can play on the PS3 and the XBox? For the latter two to negate the threat all they really have to do is exploit their online stores. OnLive and Valve would be better off trying to team up with the biggies or working with companies like Google/Asus/Apple to bring out a tablet which would utilize their system, as the Nexus 7 can to an extent.

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With regards to the PS4, i'm excited but perhaps not as much as everybody else.

 

I'll be happier when more is invested in development houses and we see some new, creative, worth-45-bloody-quid games. I'm sick of seeing the tiresome COD franchise being milked to the bone with yearly rahashes of the same damn game with an added map in an airport. Meanwhile EA are keen to bring out a FIFA 13 for the Vita which was exactly the same game (seriously) as the one they brought out half a year prior!

 

Gaming unfortunately went from gameplay to graphics. I didnt spend £45 to gaze at a bunch of realistic trees. So much of what is released today is absolutely shite (aside from the odd game) that its hard to get excited about how much RAM the next Playstation will have. All it will mean is better graphics, HHHHD. Woohoo, can't wait.

 

Then you have the flipside in Nintendo trying to make everything as gay as humanely possible (and then Sony and Microsoft followed suit). Waving around a fucking stick doesn't add a dimension to the gameplay you bellends - it just means i'm shaking a stick as opposed to pressing a button. And by the way, Mario was a great invention - 15 years ago. Donkey Kong was a great invention - 15 years ago. Zelda was amazing - 15 bloody years ago. Thick of something new and stop whoring out the same old shit for gods sake.

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The next Xbox: Always online, no second-hand games, 50GB Blu-ray discs and new Kinect | News | Edge Online

 

Microsoft’s next console will require an Internet connection in order to function, ruling out a second-hand game market for the platform. A new iteration of Xbox Live will be an integral part of Microsoft’s next console, while improved Kinect hardware will also ship alongside the unit.

 

Sources with first-hand experience of Microsoft’s next generation console have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value beyond the initial user.

 

Our source has also confirmed that the next Xbox’s recently rumoured specs are entirely accurate. That means an AMD eight-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, a D3D11.x 800MHz graphics solution and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. As of now, the console’s hard drive capacity is said to be undecided, but Microsoft’s extended commitment to online delivery suggests that it will be the largest unit it has put inside a console to date.

 

Though the architectures of the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation both resemble that of PCs, several development sources have told us that Sony’s solution is preferable when it comes to leveraging power. Studios working with the next-gen Xbox are currently being forced to work with only approved development libraries, while Sony is encouraging coders to get closer to the metal of its box. Furthermore, the operating system overhead of Microsoft’s next console is more oppressive than Sony’s equivalent, giving the PlayStation-badged unit another advantage.

 

Unlike Nintendo, Microsoft is continuing to invest heavily in motion-control interfaces, and a new, more reliably responsive Kinect will also ship alongside the next Xbox. Sony’s next-generation console camera system is said to have a similar set of features, and is expected to be discussed at the company’s PlayStation event on February 20.

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If true, why the fuck bother with physical games? If internet is essential then why not just make users download games?

 

Either way the premise is a load of balls. Surely there is some kind of law they're infringing on. So if I have game and I want to lend it to a mate, I can't? Even though its my property and it cost me 50 fucking quid.

 

If it goes this way then I hope they get hacked in the arse and freeloaded like fuck. Robbing bastards.

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The way it was mooted a while back was that you would be able to lend it to a mate but they would have to purchase a temporary license to use the game.

 

Sony have kind of brought something like this in through the back door with the Vita. When you install a gamecard on the system you can play it on another one but can't obtain trophies unless its uninstalled on the original system. It's not too far a step to take to make the game unusable on a different system without making people pay. It is a bit disconcerting.

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Don't Ubisoft and EA do something similar at the moment? With Uplay and whatever the EA version is?

 

For their online passes, yes. You can still play their games offline, I believe.

 

If you purchase an EA or Ubisoft game second hand, then you need an online pass to use multiplayer. You'd need to purchase a new online pass, if the pass that came with the game originally had been used.

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The way it was mooted a while back was that you would be able to lend it to a mate but they would have to purchase a temporary license to use the game.

 

What a retarded concept. If I was going to my friends or a family members to play a bit of FIFA there is no way either would go to the hassle of buying some sort of licence.

 

I dont think it will happen. It would be commercial suicide if they did this and Sony didn't follow suit. The only way this would happen would be if both companies had a pre-agreement to go down the same path.

 

Anyhow. I severely hope that if anything like this does happen the systems get hacked to fuck (and they will).

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What a retarded concept. If I was going to my friends or a family members to play a bit of FIFA there is no way either would go to the hassle of buying some sort of licence.

 

I dont think it will happen. It would be commercial suicide if they did this and Sony didn't follow suit. The only way this would happen would be if both companies had a pre-agreement to go down the same path.

 

Anyhow. I severely hope that if anything like this does happen the systems get hacked to fuck (and they will).

 

Dude, try taking a copy of FIFA to a mates house now to play online. Unless you have the online pass from EA for that copy of the game, registered to the device you're trying to play on, it shouldn't allow you to play online.

 

This has been the case for a couple of years now with EA products. The concept is not new, and unfortunately it is the way that online gaming was always going to be headed. Even more unfortunate now is that offline gaming also looks as though it's headed that way too...

 

As far as the hacking thing goes, if people are paying to play online, the expectation will be that the experience suffers as little down time as possible, so I would expect better security from Microsoft, Sony or whomevers servers you are using to play your game online.

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They need to reduce the prices of games if doing this.If I can download the newest games straight to my hardrive I don't see why the should cost more than £25/30.They ate cutting out the middleman so make more money anyway.

I'd pay that amount for new games.

Its put me off buying the new consoles or at least the xbox if Sony are not doing the same thing.

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They need to reduce the prices of games if doing this.If I can download the newest games straight to my hardrive I don't see why the should cost more than £25/30.They ate cutting out the middleman so make more money anyway.

I'd pay that amount for new games.

Its put me off buying the new consoles or at least the xbox if Sony are not doing the same thing.

 

Everyone will be doing it, mate. Sony might not do it straight away, but it won't take them long to start. EA and Ubisoft are just 2 of the publishers aleady utilising online passes, it won't be long before Activision and the rest follow suit.

 

As annoying as it is, there will be no second hand gaming market for the next generation consoles. You can also add future PC titles to that as well.

 

I fully agree with the statement regarding games being made available at a cheaper price if they are to be downloaded directly from the online stores to your device.

 

However, the option to do that is currently available now on Live and PSN and the cost of new releases is greater than if you went out and bought the title at your local gaming store...

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If true' date=' why the fuck bother with physical games? If internet is essential then why not just make users download games?

 

Either way the premise is a load of balls. Surely there is some kind of law they're infringing on. So if I have game and I want to lend it to a mate, I can't? Even though its my property and it cost me 50 fucking quid.

 

If it goes this way then I hope they get hacked in the arse and freeloaded like fuck. Robbing bastards.[/quote']

 

Nothing would surprise me with Microsoft.

 

For one of the world's richest companies they don't half make a balls of things.

 

You only have to look at the first batch of xbox 360's. Everyone one of them broke down, not just a few, but every single one of them. Plus the fuckers sounded like jet engine in take off

 

Then there's windows 8. If that's not a fuck up, I don't know what is. I honestly had to Google "how to find the control panel in windows 8" and I even had to Google "how to turn the power off with windows 8"

 

The concept is flawed beyond belief

 

I'm actually a bit of an xbox fan boy. I even had an original xbox, the first week it came out. But I'll be the first to admit, Microsoft make stupid mistake after stupid mistake. And their plan for the games only working in one persons console and as stupid as it seems, would not surprise me in the slightest

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Everyone will be doing it' date=' mate. Sony might not do it straight away, but it won't take them long to start. EA and Ubisoft are just 2 of the publishers aleady utilising online passes, it won't be long before Activision and the rest follow suit.

 

As annoying as it is, there will be no second hand gaming market for the next generation consoles. You can also add future PC titles to that as well.

 

I fully agree with the statement regarding games being made available at a cheaper price if they are to be downloaded directly from the online stores to your device.

 

However, the option to do that is currently available now on Live and PSN and the cost of new releases is greater than if you went out and bought the title at your local gaming store...[/quote']

 

Might be the thing that stops me buying the machines to be honest.I think they will loose a lot of the casual gamers.I don't play online so never really bothered with the additional passes as I never needed them.I have not been playing as much lately anyway,few great single player games come out these days.I hated assassins creed 3,really bad game IMO and I was a massive fan of the series.

There online prices are a joke as things stand,I did but Batman Arkham Asylum off there a few months back for £20 as I didn't want to go out and pick it up in town.

 

Shame

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Risky business: the next Xbox versus PlayStation 4 | Features | Edge Online

 

You’ve got to admire Microsoft’s bravery. News that its next Xbox could shut out the second-hand games market has caused strong reactions across social media today, and it has impacted upon the real world too. GameStop’s share price took a dent following the publication of our story earlier this afternoon.

 

If our sources are correct (and we’re confident they are), Microsoft has made the move that publishers and developers have been asking for. Microsoft’s next Xbox will do what Steam and the App Store have been doing for years, and very successfully, too – a download-first, one profile, one purchase, one storefront system. Overnight, it’ll stop GameStop and GAME from selling on games without a penny heading back to its publisher, let alone its creator.

 

In recent years, online passes have allowed publishers to recoup some of the cost of maintaining servers for online play, but they have always been something of a half-measure. With the next Xbox, Microsoft could go all the way.

 

The key differences between Steam, the App Store and the next iteration of Xbox Live are in pricing and that ‘always-on’ detail. There’s good reason no-one really cares that you can’t trade in Steam and App Store games – often, they’re so cheap it barely seems worth the bother. One can easily call into question whether download-first next-gen games will actually be any cheaper because they skip costly manufacturing and distribution processes. One would expect they won’t be. On first impressions, Microsoft is taking a huge risk in cutting out a second-hand games ecosystem which keeps gaming affordable and its players interested in the box under their television.

 

But it is worth remembering that in adopting this download-first policy, Microsoft is free from existing pricing models. One can easily imagine premium prices for those titles deemed still worthy of a retail release. Service-based subscriptions for bigger, costlier games will play a part, too, and middle and lower tier games will sell further down the pricing scale. And let’s not forget free-to-play.

 

Microsoft has also, rather more sensibly, surmised that the kind of consumer happy to pay for a next-generation console is going to have a decent internet connection. It is not a portable device; there’s little harm in keeping the next Xbox connected, as long as the next iteration of Xbox Live is implemented in the right way. Past experiences with always-on services have been disappointing – just ask Ubisoft and Blizzard – but that’s current generation technology. Microsoft must take note of its contemporaries’ mistakes and make its always-on Xbox service as unobtrusive as it can.

 

What’s trickier for Microsoft is in explaining its decision when faced with Sony’s plans for the PlayStation 4. Walk into a game retailer (should you be able to find one by the time these consoles arrive) and the choice could be simple: PlayStation 4 is more powerful, and plays second-hand games. One can imagine how fruitful a call between Kaz Hirai and Don Mattrick might have been had they both agreed to take the same measures against second-hand sales.

 

Based on our sources’ information, we are building an ever clearer picture of what PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox will be. Right now, there seems to be a subtle role reversal happening; Microsoft’s stricter, more complex box aspires to be the complete entertainment superhub PS3 was once designed to be. Sony’s PlayStation 4 is more PC-like and developer-friendly, as Xbox once was.

 

What hasn’t changed is the logistical challenge of launching a home console. We understand that PS4 will reach the US and Japan by the end of this year, with European territories to follow after Christmas, just as PS3 did. What Microsoft might stand to lose in halting the second-hand market, it could gain if it manages to launch its new console globally before PS4.

 

Bit of a long one this but interesting...

 

Why Microsoft is killing the second-hand game market | Features | Edge Online

 

We revealed yesterday that Microsoft’s next Xbox will only play games while connected to Xbox Live, in the process eliminating the second-hand game market as it exists today. It didn’t take long for gamers to reach the agreement that such a manoeuvre represents a mistake of horrendous proportions. So why would Microsoft risk pulling a move like this? The company has yet to make any official comment on its next-generation plans, but we can go some way toward piecing together its motivations, starting with its decision to position the next Xbox as an always-online device.

 

In making its next console rely on an Internet connection, and by tying games to consoles, Microsoft will immediately eliminate the potential for pirated software. If you’re trying to play a game and your console isn’t talking to the closed network that is Xbox Live in precisely the right way – because the game code is somehow illegimate – it simply won’t function. Crushing piracy this way would represent a victory whose stature in the eyes of Microsoft’s publishing partners shouldn’t be underestimated.

 

Having a consistent online connection also means that Microsoft can provide a more stable target environment for developers and publishers by pushing firmware updates at the same time to all of its users rather than only a proportion. The days of publishers being forced to manufacture game discs containing operating-system updates will end – with Microsoft hardware, at least.

 

Beyond security and standardisation issues, a key motivation for Microsoft is the fact that the preowned market has long been an annoying tick on the back of game publishers and developers, and not only because when consumers are faced with such an appealing range of cheap options, it reduces the opportunities for new games to sell. The chief gripe among publishers and developers is that they see no revenues from sales of preowned games. It’s a standpoint that earns no sympathy with consumers, who want to be able to do whatever they wish with their possessions, but in changing the rules in this way, Microsoft immediately becomes a preferred partner to game publishers.

 

There remains a possibility that Microsoft will allow publishers to sell pre-owned game activations via Xbox Live, in much the same way that, right now, buyers of certain second-hand Xbox 360 games with online components can pay to access features such as online play. Rather than eliminating the second-hand game market, this would simply transform it into something from which publishers and developers could benefit. Looking at it optimistically, the revenues being re-routed into publishing and development would provide additional investment opportunities for new games, so what at first seems like simply bad news for consumers may end up being beneficial in the long term.

 

Yet online activations for preowned games would still prove devastating to the value of physical copies sitting on shop shelves, and therefore bricks-and-mortar retail as a whole. Let’s say that a game costs £40 new today and then £25 second-hand. If, with the next Xbox, online activation of a preowned game costs £25, what does that do to the value of the physical disc? And what, then, does that do to the value of game retailers, accustomed as they are to earning such a large proportion of their revenues from secondhand game sales? Suddenly a space-consuming rack of 200–300 preowned titles looks like a miserable proposition in terms of retail value.

 

Looking at the bigger picture, in positioning its next Xbox as an always-online device Microsoft is simply following the path of evolution. Game consoles have been online (in a meaningful way) for 15 years, since the launch of Sega’s Dreamcast in 1998. And today it can feel more out of the ordinary to be disconnected from the Internet than it felt to be connected to it once upon a time. When was the last time you used a static (that is, non-portable) PC that wasn’t online? How often is your TV’s set-top box disconnected from the Internet? How many new TVs fail to make a big deal about being online-ready out of the box? To many, exposure to a constantly enabled networked device feels as natural as drawing breath.

 

What Microsoft ultimately wants to achieve is a bigger share of your online life. It wants you to use its console, not your cable or satellite set-top box, to rent movies. It wants you to bolster your music collection not via iTunes but via Xbox Music. It wants you to pipe TV programming into your living room through its console rather than making use of your new TV’s clunky Smart features.

 

The more you use its ecosystem, the more accustomed you become to The Xbox Way, and the more inclined you are to dig deeper into its offerings. (And the more opportunity Microsoft has to track your behaviours, giving it an increased amount of profitable opportunities to use its platform to connect you with other companies eager for exposure to your eyeballs.) Microsoft’s Windows 8, Surface and Windows phones all have Xbox Live functionality to varying degrees, and the more the company is able to touch users’ lives in a meaningful way through its network, the more likely users are to spend time, energy and money with its other products and services. Viewed this way, an always-online console simply makes good business sense.

 

But if Microsoft is so committed to online connectivity with its next Xbox, why does the console have a Blu-ray drive at all? Well, clearly an always-online console doesn’t necessarily mean an always-online console connected to the Internet at speeds of 20Mb/s+. Even though PC owners have long been accustomed to buying all of their games via download services such as Steam, Microsoft knows, through its experience with Xbox Live to date, that a significant proportion of its potential consumers do not have ultra-fast – or even remotely fast – connections. Far preferable to such users would be the option to suck down up to 50GB of data from a Blu-ray disc at a rate of 27MB (216Mb) per second.

 

Having a Blu-ray drive on board also ticks another box in Microsoft’s campaign to make its next Xbox the ultimate entertainment platform for the home. Despite the rise of streaming media services, the Blu-ray and DVD market isn’t going away in the immediate future, and any measure Microsoft can take in keeping you focused on its hardware and away from others represents sound strategy.

 

And when it comes to physical discs, let’s not forget about those all-important thirdparty publishers. How could they sell games in profitable special-edition form if the box contained a soundtrack CD, a magnificent art book and an intricately detailed character statuette but no trace of a shimmering game disc to place ceremonially into a drive tray?

 

Finally, what about backward compatibility with Xbox 360 software? We don’t yet know whether or not Microsoft has such plans, but being able to run all of your existing game discs from the optical drive of a new console would go some way toward appeasing fans feeling burned by what they’re being denied in other respects.

 

Ultimately, the new Xbox is still at least eight months away from becoming something you can put in your home, and Microsoft may yet rethink elements of its next-generation strategy. Can it hold its nerve in the face of outrage among consumers who’ve caught sight of its plans for second-hand games?

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One thing that puzzles me about the seemingly inevitable rush to downloading games rather than the physical disc, is where are you going to store these games?

 

I don't know if I'm typical, but I never trade in my games. I like to keep them, collect them.

 

I have upwards of 50 odd PS3 games at the moment. What is the capacity of a Bluray disc, 50GB isn't it? Not to mention games add-ons and DLC. So, I would need upwards of 2-3 TB of HDD storage.

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