Sony has been backing up its PS5 game builds as part of a preservation effort

Back in 2022, Sony hired Garrett Fredley to join its then newly formed Preservation team, which has been working to find and save documentation of PlayStation's 30-year history since then. Now, Fredley spoke at Game Developers Conference to give an update about his team's efforts. In his Game File newsletter, Stephen Totilo has shared the details about Fredley's talk. Apparently, the team formed what it's calling the PlayStation Studios Vault to store everything it could find about Sony's game-making history. 

The Vault now houses game builds, source code and source art, but it has all kinds of other files, as well. Fredley explained that it was created to preserve "everything that is ever related to a project you can possibly find: from documentation to audio assets, to prototype information, anything under the sun, even cultural artifacts." If it's adjacent to a PlayStation studio game, the team will store it in the Vault — even photos of developer teams that made the game. Currently, the oldest item in the team's collection has a 1994 timestamp and was from the tactical RPG Arc the Lad. The latest files include every customer-facing PS5 build of every PlayStation Studios game, as well as every debug, testing, alpha, beta and milestone releases. It has over 1,000 builds saved.

At the moment, the Vault has two main servers located in Las Vegas, Nevada and Liverpool, England, which store 650 terabytes of data, or around 200 million files. That's almost double the 350 terabytes of data Fredley said the team gathered during another one of his talks last year. He expects to quickly go over the 1 petabyte of cloud server storage data the team's current setup can handle, especially since more and more games are being developed. 

The preservation team uses tools to help its work, including a robot called Vaultron that can read thousands of discs to find files. But it still hasn't been easy, since most studios don't exactly store their files in a way that makes them understandable and accessible decades from now. Going forward, Fredley and his team will have to solve a few problems that they're expecting to pop up. They'll need to have good indexing tools, for instance, and figure out a way to maintain the ability to use the files they collect.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sony-has-been-backing-up-its-ps5-game-builds-as-part-of-a-preservation-effort-150025423.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sony-has-been-backing-up-its-ps5-game-builds-as-part-of-a-preservation-effort-150025423.html?src=rss
Utworzony 30d | 29 mar 2025, 17:20:20


Zaloguj się, aby dodać komentarz

Inne posty w tej grupie

UK regulator wants to ban apps that can make deepfake nude images of children

The UK's Children's Commissioner is calling for a ban on AI deepfake apps that create nude or sexual images of children, according to a new

28 kwi 2025, 13:30:17 | Engadget
The best rice cooker for 2025

By all accounts, I am a good cook. Yet in all my years, I don't think I've ever made a wonderful batch of rice on the stovetop. Overcooking, undercooking, scorching; you name it, I’ve done it. Thos

28 kwi 2025, 13:30:16 | Engadget
The Last of Us season two 'The Path' recap: The calm after the storm before the storm

There’s an understandable and undeniable pall hanging over The Last of Us after last week’s shocker. And it’s the calm before the storm that’ll make up the rest of the season: Ellie and Di

28 kwi 2025, 13:30:15 | Engadget
Forza Horizon 5 is on the PS5, so I no longer need an Xbox

Forza Horizon 5 is the entire reason I have an Xbox Series S. I’m not really a car guy in real life — if money, practicality and burning through fossil fuels were less of a concern, I’d ge

28 kwi 2025, 11:10:13 | Engadget
Suborbital Salvage is a thrilling endless runner for Playdate that pelts you with asteroids and insults

Picture this: you’re zooming through space in a torpedo-shaped ship doing the dangerous job of salvaging material in a planet’s cluttered orbit when some giant, alien cousin of a

27 kwi 2025, 23:30:22 | Engadget
Meta’s AI chatbots were reportedly able to engage in sexual conversations with minors

Meta’s AI chatbots were caught having sexual roleplay conversations with accounts labeled as underage, which sometimes involved its celebrity-voiced chatbots, according to a report from the

27 kwi 2025, 21:20:09 | Engadget
Apple's newest iPad is down to its best price yet

Those looking to upgrade from an aging tablet to a new iPad should consider the new

27 kwi 2025, 21:20:08 | Engadget