Author: Game Infliction

2023 might finally be the year where 2TB PS5 SSDs might actually be worth the upgrade. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $100 price point and 2TB SSDs are under $200. The reason PS5 SSD upgrades are pricey is that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive. That means, for better or for worse, picking a top-shelf SSD.

Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.

Samsung 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $159.99

Samsung SSDs need no introduction. They’ve made some of the most popular and reliable PS5 SSDs on the market. The 980 Pro has been out for a while now, but it’s still one of Samsung’s fastest M.2 PCIe SSD, with only the newly released 990 Pro being faster. It is fully PS5 compatible in terms of form factor and performance, with blistering speeds of up to 7,100MB/s. It goes toe to toe with other well-known options like the WD Black SN850 and the Seagate Firecuda 530.

WD Black 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $169.99

Amazon has the newest WD Black Series SN850X M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD for the best price we’ve seen. In fact, this is lower than the price we saw on Black Friday. The SN850X is the successor to the SN850 SSD. It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware, which combined offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds. For PC gamers, there’s also an updated Game Mode 2.0 utility that’s designed to tune the SSD for better performance during gaming sessions.

Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB “Optimized for PS5” SSD with Heatsink for Only $169.99

Corsair is a very well known brand for DIY PC builders. Corsair makes some of the best gaming products on the market, and that includes solid-state memory like RAM and SSDs. The MP600 Pro is the same super-fast M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 Gen4 SSD that’s marketed for enthusiast gaming PC builds. This one is “optimized for PS5” because it includes a rugged preinstalled heatsink that is slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay without any issues. Performance wise, the MP600 Pro matches the best SSDs out there with its 7,100MB/sec sequential read and 6,800MB/sec sequential write speeds.

More PS5 SSD Deals

There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.

How easy is it to install the SSD?

It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.

What if the SSD I bought doesn’t have a heatsink?

Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.

For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.

Battlefield’s next single-player campaign appears to be a big focus for EA DICE, as the company is reportedly building a new team to support Ridgeline Games in creating the franchise’s first single-player campaign since 2018’s Battlefield V.

Ridgeline games is a new studio led by Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto. The studio was established last fall to create a new narrative campaign set in the Battlefield universe. Reported by GI.biz, the new support team is a slight change of course in the previously-established plan for the Battlefield series.

EA tasked three studios with the future of Battlefield: DICE was handed the multiplayer aspect, Ridgeline Games was to work on the single-player campaign, and Ripple Effect is making a “completely different” Battlefield experience. Now, DICE is expanding to help Ridgeline Games on the campaign while continuing work on multiplayer.

We just heard last December that former Battlefield 4 producer David Sirland returned to DICE to lead development of Battlefield. In addition to producing Battlefield 4, Sirland’s long history with the franchise includes credits on Battlefield 2, Bad Company, 1, and V.

Battlefield’s last entry was 2021’s Battlefield 2042, which was met with lukewarm reception. Players were frustrated with the lack of features at launch, and the game failed to draw in the same playerbase as Battlefield 1, 4, and V. EA is still releasing new content for Battlefield 2042, with Season 4 set to kick off on February 28.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Playground Games has announced that the Rally Adventure expansion will be the second piece of major DLC for Forza Horizon 5.

Announced on Forza’s YouTube channel, the expansion arrives on March 29 and includes a whole new rally career mode. A brief trailer for the expansion (below) also showed off new gameplay and teased some features that players can enjoy in the Rally Adventure DLC.

Playground also revealed some new customisation options coming to Forza Horizon 5, promising that players can “build a rally monster”.

Get your tires muddy. The Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure is here. pic.twitter.com/cSQz1AWVYy

— Forza Horizon (@ForzaHorizon) February 23, 2023

The first expansion was announced last June and reintroduced Hotwheels to the Forza Horizon world. The over the top toys were added to the game’s open world Mexico map and let players race through all sorts of ridiculous settings, like a loop-the-loop in a volcano.

In our 10/10 review of the base game, IGN said: “Forza Horizon 5 is the result of a racing studio at the peak of its craft and the best open-world racing game available.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

While Cal Kestis was part of a crew in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – exploring the galaxy in the Stinger Mantis ship with his mentor, Cere Junda; its captain, Greez, and (eventually) his former bitter enemy turned bestie, Nightsister Merrin – once he was boots on the ground planetside, it was largely a fairly lonely adventure. Outside, of course, of the companionship of the ever adorable BD-1.

That changes in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor thanks to the addition of Bode Akuna, a new character in Jedi Survivor, played by Noshir Dalal, who can be seen in the reveal trailer lending a hand to Cal both in a cutscene and in gameplay where he executes a cool tandem finisher on a Scout Trooper. But Bode’s presence as a companion character goes far beyond just cool finishing moves. It’s actually part of a system that Respawn has dubbed “Character-in-Gameplay.”

Characters-in-Gameplay is a term used internally at Respawn to differentiate between NPCs that accompany Cal in actual gameplay segments from characters that stayed behind at specific narrative hubs. As Senior Game Designer Jason Zhu explains it: “There was a desire for NPCs to be used as guides in the levels, and while talking it through, one thing led to another until people started wondering, ‘Why don’t we have NPC’s travel and fight alongside Cal?’”

The team then evaluated whether implementing such a system was feasible with the tech they had, and ultimately decided that it was worth the time and effort to create a system that allowed for companions to join Cal in battle. There was even a precedent already set back in Fallen Order – the boss battle against Malicos where Merrin supports you throughout the battle. That served as the jumping off point, and the character-in-gameplay system is largely an expansion of what players saw during that boss battle.

When he’s accompanying Cal, Bode will actively participate in the fight. He can attack and kill enemies on his own, draw the attention of some enemies to take pressure off the player, and you can command him to help you out by doing some sort of special move on a single target to disrupt them.

To give a specific example, Narrative Technical Designer Joanna Robb said, “When you see a good opportunity, you can give Bode the signal to perform the attack, and he’ll use his jetpack to ram the enemy with a brutal dropkick, and then he quickly follows it up by slamming down a shock grenade to stun other nearby enemies. It’s a great way to send a tough enemy flying, taking them out of the fight briefly, or you could run them down with a sprint attack to get a quick hit in.”

Robb goes on to say that there are also a lot of custom behaviors for Bode that help make him a dependable ally. Bode will respond to your own abilities and attacks with a technique of his own. If you force push an enemy, Bode will fire a charged shot that deals a ton of damage. You can even force grab a Probe Droid, toss it at a group of Stormtroopers, and Bode’s shot will essentially detonate the droid causing a big explosion that takes out the group of enemies all at once.

“We don’t necessarily tutorialize all of these behaviors, they are just designed to give you these emergent moments that are totally your own, but feel almost choreographed like you’re in one of the movies,” said Robb.

Outside of combat, Bode will follow you through the world, using his jetpack to reach places that Cal’s force powers typically allow him to reach via double jumps, wall runs, and so on. Robb said that one of the coolest parts about making an AI companion that can travel such complex spaces is how it pushed the team to develop a new Motion Matching animation system for Bode.

“He needs to be able to think very quickly about where he should go and how to get there, and the Motion Matching system allows the animations to drive his movement, which makes him much more responsive and dynamic than our other AI characters. It really makes him feel like he’s on the same level as Cal as a character with agency in the world, not just a combatant who happens to be on your side,” explained Robb.

Don’t expect Cal to always have someone covering his six, though. According to both Robb and Zhu, the prevalence of companion characters is really driven by the story. If you’re spending time exploring all of a planet’s side content, Bode will stick around on the Mantis. Robb added that, “There’s a nice rhythm to it. When the plot is reaching a peak, the companion will give extra momentum to both the narrative and gameplay.”

As far as whether or not there will be more companion characters than just Bode, Robb did say that Bode will be the first character that Cal would team up with, but rather than talk about characters that would be joining Cal as a combat companion, she preferred to rule one out.

“I’m sure many fans of the first game are dying to know if everyone’s favorite member of the Mantis crew, the stowaway bogling that Cal adopts, will also be a Character-In-Gameplay, and I regret to say that they will not,” said Robb.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit