I think most gamers have come to accept that they will sometimes need to upgrade their PC hardware to run the latest games. We understand that since the quality and quantity of visual and audio resources required by top tier games continues to increase, so will the requirements for graphics processors (GPU), CPU, and memory.

Of course, we can often delay the inevitable, by running games at less than their maximum settings. But those of us lucky enough to be able to afford regular hardware upgrades will often happily pay for a new GPU if it means we can run the latest new games.

But now, according to The Verge, at least two major game developers are saying that we will also be required to run their upcoming titles on solid state drives (SSDs).

Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years, Starfield, will require 125GB of SSD storage when it debuts on September 6th. It’s not a recommendation — it’s a minimum spec to play Starfield on a PC.

CD Projekt Red also revealed that it’s bumping the minimum specs of Cyberpunk 2077 to require an SSD at minimum and phasing out HDD support.

Have you ever noticed that some high end games load faster than others? And that games from certain companies seem to consistently suffer from slow load times? What that tells me is that the developers working on those games haven't figured out how to load game resources efficiently.

So the way I interpret these announcements from Bethesda and CD Projekt Red is that they're giving up on ever figuring out how to load and manage large amounts of resource data efficiently. Instead, they're adding to the already significant pressure on gamers to buy new hardware.

I don't imagine we'll see much pushback from gamers on this. These days, gamers with high end gaming rigs are already using SSDs. Most new pre-built PCs now come with SSDs.

But wouldn't it make sense to allow these games to be installed on and run from HDDs, and then show an alert to the user, to the effect that load times would be greatly improved by running from an SSD? Why force the issue, potentially angering and alienating potential customers?