Microsoft’s DirectStorage tech arrives on PC with perplexing, encouraging results

From PC World: We’ve been waiting for Microsoft’s DirectStorage—the backbone of the Xbox Series X’s ultra-fast storage technology—to come to Windows for years now. After being released to developers last spring, it’s finally here, sinking its deep optimized-storage hooks into Square Enix’s Forspoken, which released this week to middling reviews…and no review copies for PC reviewers. Ominous. So is the lightning-fast load-free future of PC gaming finally here?

Definitely maybe? Forspoken indeed sports some damned impressive loading times, but it’s unclear how much of a difference DirectStorage itself makes in this game if you already have a fast NVMe SSD.

First, the good news. As spotted by Neowin, several users report achieving blisteringly fast load times on the PC. (Since PC review copies weren’t provided, user reports are key in these early days.) Twitter user BlooHook loaded all of Forspoken’s benchmark scenes in under two seconds, as measured by the game. Impressive!

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