How Long Does It Take To Load Games On PlayStation 5?

Long load times have become an unfortunate reality over the last few years as games have become bigger, more detailed, and more resource-intensive. As a result, incremental console upgrades like the PS4 Pro haven't been able to keep up. While some of the best-optimized games, like Ghost of Tsushima, managed to keep those times down, waiting well over a minute or more to make it into a game was the new normal.

The new generation of consoles, such as the critically praised PlayStation 5, has brought SSDs and improved performance across the board, including long-promised reduced load times. Now that the console is here, testers have put the new machine side by side with its predecessor, the PlayStation 4, to determine if Sony has delivered on its promises.

From early reports, it appears that the SSDs have come through, and gamers around the world are enjoying streamlined gaming experiences. Let's look at some of the data collected to find out just how long it takes to load games on the PlayStation 5.

To find out if the PlayStation 5 could deliver improved load times, testers at Kotaku opened up the stopwatch app on their phones. To get a better understanding of just how much the PlayStation 5 was capable of streamlining loading, they measured the amount of time it took to get from the console's main screen into a playable game.

To evaluate how well a game optimized for the PlayStation 5 performed versus the PlayStation 4, Kotaku looked at Spider-Man: Miles Morales. This PlayStation 5 launch title blew away load times on the PlayStation 4, taking only 15 seconds to load into Harlem on the PlayStation 5 instead of well over a minute on the PlayStation 4.

In contrast, even a game optimized for the PlayStation 4 performed better on the PlayStation 5. The recent Ghost of Tsushima, which loaded so well on the PlayStation 4 that developers slowed down disc read speeds to allow tips to display, still benefited from the new console's SSD. To load from the main screen into feudal Japan takes 1:10 on a PlayStation 4. The PlayStation 5 reduces that time to 1:03.

What about games that have received no optimization specific to either system? Does the superior SSD hardware of the PlayStation 5 still give the new system the edge?

Again, the answer is yes, and this time, it's by an even wider margin. Kotaku took a copy of Borderlands 3, a notoriously slow-loading game. It takes almost four full minutes to reach Sanctuary 3, the game's central hub, on the PlayStation 4. On the PlayStation 5, the total time is 1:20

Kotaku's findings are well in line with what other testers have found. Hardcore Gamer performed a similar experiment on Destiny 2, one of the worst offending AAA titles regarding load times. Moving from Tower to Tower can take minutes, killing the solar system-hopping loot shooter's momentum. The PlayStation 5 improved load times significantly, with the PlayStation 4 clocking in at 1:35 to load new locations and the PlayStation 5 reducing that to just 48 seconds.