As games keep growing larger, storage capacity may not keep pace – and Sony may have found a way to push back against that.
Kepler_L2, a leaker known for sharing AMD-related information, has offered more details on the expected base configuration of Sony’s PlayStation 6. Alongside Moore’s Law Is Dead, this insider has become one of the most prolific sources of information on both the PlayStation 6 and its main rival, Microsoft’s next console – Project Helix. Both systems are expected to be built around AMD’s RDNA 5 and Zen 6 architectures, and Kepler_L2 has previously posted AMD-related leaks that proved accurate. A few days ago, the leaker shared – and we also covered it – that the bill of materials, essentially the list of how much Sony would be paying for each component inside the console, is estimated at $760. Kepler_L2 added that Sony could still cut the retail price to $700 – selling the machine at a loss, as it did in past console generations – but that outcome is far from guaranteed.
After that, a NeoGAF user asked the leaker what kind of storage and disc-drive setup was included in that estimate, and the answer was a 1 TB SSD with no Blu-ray drive. That response surprised and worried other users, largely because of how bloated game installs have become, but Kepler_L2 then clarified why this would make sense for Sony: it is the most obvious place to trim costs, and if the PlayStation 6 SDK – its software development kit – supports neural texture compression, game sizes could actually end up smaller than they are on PlayStation 5.
It is still unclear whether the leaker is referring to AMD’s own Neural Texture Block Compression technology or Nvidia’s similar Neural Texture Compression solution. The former would make sense since the PlayStation 6 is expected to run on AMD hardware, but that does not necessarily settle it. There has been no further public news about NTBC since the original paper surfaced in July 2024. Nvidia, on the other hand, has already released an SDK for a preliminary version of Neural Texture Compression, and crucially, it supports both AMD and Intel hardware as well. It is possible that Sony may simply choose that route because it already exists in usable form. NTC could make a serious difference to install sizes, too: early tests suggest it can save up to seven times more space than the current compression standard, BC7. A 150 GB game could theoretically shrink to just 21-22 GB.
There is another side to this rumor as well: Sony’s new console may drop physical discs entirely. That trend has been visible for a while now, and the existence of a digital-only PlayStation 5 model since 2020 makes that direction easy to imagine. Over the past six years, the retail market has continued to contract, so it would be a logical step for the PlayStation 6 to focus exclusively on digital software from 2027 onward. Collectors, however, are not going to be thrilled if that really happens.
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