Solving the data storage challenge for gamers

PC gaming remains a favourite among gamers, as many popular AAA games can be easily obtained and played. However, these games come at a cost, and when I say cost, it doesn’t really mean that they are expensive; rather, these games  end up occupying a lot of space on a computer. For instance, popular AAA games take up as much as 200GB+ space on a computer, and a professional gamer usually plays at least two or three games a week. Hence, one often ends up facing issues such as a lengthy boot time or longer load time of games and even gets stuck during multi-player gameplay.

What’s more, with time, game install sizes continue to increase. This is partly because with every update, more features such as 4K textures, complex graphics, and audio are added, thereby increasing the size of the game, which will further adversely impact the load time. So how do we solve this problem? It’s simple: by investing in a reliable and high-performing storage device, which will thereby help enhance the gaming experience. Popular operating systems may require 20 GB of space, but when you download as many as three to four AAA games, the capacity must be increased.  In fact, as per the ‘Next-Gen Gamers’ research conducted by Western Digital, 57% of gamers have cited slow storage as a critical factor for the poor gaming experience. Furthermore, 51% of gamers said that slow game loading besides bandwidth issues as some of the main areas of concern. It is here that solid-state drive (SSD) storage devices play a crucial role.

The Benefits of SSD Storage

An SSD provides smoother gameplay. Many complex games perform a large number of tiny read and write operations during gameplay, which usually result in hundreds of megabytes of data transfer. Even if an upgrade to an SSD will not increase frame per second (FPS), it will result in some open-world titles with game engines that load in new areas and textures. In comparison, the greater bandwidth and reduced latency of SSDs help in accelerating and thereby processing the command. The latest NVMe technology-based SSDs, such as those offered in the WD_BLACK portfolio, should resolve these issues for gamers.

As the industry grows and the demand for complex games increases, storage devices are also evolving. For example, there is NVMe, which enables faster speeds on SSDs. The technology not only allows a faster installation of a game, thereby letting the gameplay begin almost instantly, but also further aids in recording as well as streaming. For e-sports players, recording and streaming of the gameplay is a vital part of the entire journey; thus, the technology makes it easier to edit videos, which can be quickly streamed. In multi-player games, a player often streams the gameplay live.

With gaming in Nigeria becoming a serious profession for the younger generations of players, they now look at building a personal computer, which would allow them to upgrade from time to time or when the need arises. Hence, young Nigerian consumers have begun to recognise the importance of good hardware and are ready to invest in it. As an industry, it is therefore equally important that we continue to innovate.