I'm enjoying the surface level absurdity of Microsoft updating DirectStorage 1.2 for the benefit of ye olde hard drives

pcgamer.com:

Microsoft has released its new DirectStorage 1.2 SDK(opens in new tab), the latest update to the biggest thing to happen to SSDs since we shifted away from the hoary old Sandforce controller. And the biggest thing to happen in this update… an improvement to the way it works on hard drives.

There's a level of absurdity there that I can absolutely get on board with. But it does make total sense, and could in fact be one thing that might actually encourage more game developers to jump on the feature sooner rather than later.

DirectStorage is aimed at leveraging the power and performance of solid state drive technology, in conjunction with modern GPUs, to improve the performance of games that utilise the DirectX-based tech. It aims to both lower load times, or even remove them entirely, and also reduce the load on CPUs(opens in new tab) when it comes to shifting data around a system.

But it doesn't really work well on hard drives, though that's kinda the point: it's not meant to.

Despite SSDs having been around for a long while now in gaming PCs, it's only been this generation that's seen them being installed by default in the key games consoles. With most game development being cross platform in nature, the vast majority of titles have still needed to work well on older hard drive technology.

That's less of an issue now, and there's a DirectStorage analogue in both Xbox Series X/S and (to a maybe lesser extent) in the PlayStation 5. Which means now is the time to start really taking advantage of those SSDs for gaming.

But there are still a lot of legacy machines out there which use hard drives, and developers aren't going to want to cut out sections of a potential audience, which might go to explain why we've so far only