On PlayStation 5, a compression technology was introduced thanks to which games on the Sony console often take up less space than on other platforms. Recently, users drew attention to another technical solution that could, in the future, reduce game sizes.
Sony is patenting the "Asset Streaming System and Method".
The idea is that the user will download something like a "launcher" with critically important files for the core logic (the necessary technical files will be in the system itself), while the remaining assets will be loaded as needed.
According to the developers' estimates, the size of such a package will be about 100 MB, and "not 10 or 100 GB, as is often the case with large-scale games".
Engineers acknowledge potential problems, such as input lag or degraded image quality:
[...] for example, the user's internet connection may be limited (as in the case of a mobile connection), resulting in significant latency, due to which responses to user actions are less immediate than desired. In addition, poor network conditions may cause latency spikes or similar phenomena that worsen the user experience: this may lead to delays in frame delivery to the user's device or delays in transmitting input commands to the server, and in an inconsistent, unstable manner. Compression artifacts may also appear as a result of video encoding, which degrades the visual quality of the content the user interacts with.
There is one caveat: obtaining a patent for the technology does not guarantee its implementation in a hypothetical "PlayStation 6".