PS4 Update Massively Reduces (Some) Game Load Times

With the launch of the PS5 literally just weeks away now, Sony recently released a patch for the PS4 looking to get some of the transitional groundwork in place. It seems, however, that following various reports, users have noticed something quite unusual, but certainly welcome from this update. – Namely, that since its application, a number of Sony first-party gaming titles for the console have started loading up (on the PS4 just in case this needed clarification) massively faster than they used to!

In fact, in some cases, load times have been cut by almost 70%!

PS4 Load Times Tumble Down!

As you can see in the video below (courtesy of ‘ElAnalistaDeBit‘), taking The Last of Us Remastered as an example, the initial load time for the game has been reduced from around 1 minute 30 seconds, to less than 15! – Similar results (albeit, not quite as spectacular) have also been noted in games such as ‘Until Dawn’ and ‘God of War’.

Put simply, a lot of games are running significantly faster on the PS4 and, although pending official confirmation, the rumor mill does have a potential answer for this.

What’s Happened?

Although not confirmed at the time of writing, it is understood that the new update for the PS4 has introduced a new compression tool for a number of gaming releases. Something that will be introduced (and potentially improved further) with the PS5. As such, with files able to ‘open’ faster, load times have been massively reduced for a number of titles. While we have only cited three here, the odds are that a significant portion of other titles have also seen a fair to moderate load time reduction.

This isn’t even potentially ‘new tech’ either as many have gone on to speculate that the very respectable load times in ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ may have been the initial testing ground for this new compression software. – Put simply though, despite the PS4 being set to shortly be ‘last-gen’ technology, if you still plan to game on it for a while, the chances are that your experiences are going to be significantly better!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!