“Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart,” the action platformer that showcased the fast SSD capabilities of the PlayStation 5, will soon be available for PCs without an SSD. This is made possible by Microsoft’s DirectStorage API 1.2, which will make the game compatible with older PCs.
The developer studio Insomniac implemented a unique system for the PS5 version of the game, where data from the SSD is loaded directly into the RAM, and the GPU decompresses the data. This allows for rapid game world transitions and detailed environments without constant loading times. The creative director of the game, Marcus Smith, stated that this level of presentation would not have been possible without an SSD.
Two years after its PS5 release, “Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart” will be released for PC on July 26, 2023, with the porting done by the partner studio Nixxes. In a now-deleted blog post on Steam, the system requirements for the PC version were outlined. The minimum system requirements do not include the need for an SSD.
Nixxes will utilize DirectStorage memory management as part of DirectX 12 for PC versions of the game. With version 1.2 of DirectStorage, GPUs can access data on HDDs as well. However, the performance differs between SSDs and HDDs. NVMe SSDs are fast enough to process GPU requests promptly, while HDDs are slower and require pre-sorting of memory accesses. It remains uncertain how well DirectStorage will function with HDDs. “Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart” will be the first PC game to use DirectStorage 1.2 with hard drive support. Currently, DirectStorage is not widely implemented and is only present in Square Enix’s “Forspoken” action role-playing game.
