We’ve been waiting for Microsoft DirectStorage—the foundation of Xbox Series X ultra-fast storage technology—to come to Windows for years. After being released to developers last spring, it’s finally here, plunging its deeply optimized storage hooks into Square Enix’s Forspoken, which was released this week to medium reviews… and no review copies to PC reviewers. Sinister. So, is the lightning-fast future of no-load PC gaming finally here?
Certainly, maybe? Forspoken does have pretty darn impressive load times, but it’s unclear how much DirectStorage impacts this game if you already have a fast NVMe SSD.
First, good news. As Neowin noted, several users are reporting incredibly fast PC boot times. (Because PC review copies weren’t provided, user reports are key in these early days.) Twitter user BlooHook downloaded all of Forspoken’s test scenes in less than two seconds, as measured by the game. Impressive!
JJDizz1L – who follows me on Twitter, hey JJDizz1L! posted an equally impressive video showing Forspoken launching almost instantly when he selects “Continue” after exiting the game. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it,” he says, and he’s right. This is great!
But there are questions about whether they are the result of DirectStorage, or whether Forspoken simply has super-fast load times. On the r/hardware subreddit, user skipan noticed that the game only loads instantly when you continue from the most recent save. “It looks like they’re ‘cheating’ by preloading the most recent save file on the start screen,” Skipan said. “I get instant loading of the latest and a loading screen on older ones. It’s actually useful for the gaming experience, but for benchmarking you should load an older save.”
Skipan has kindly uploaded the following video to YouTube showing the difference in loading times after saving twice in the same location as shown below:
Regarding BlooHook’s two-second load time, our own Adam Patrick Murray experimented with the Forspoken test last night and reported seeing similar results on a system with a fast NVMe drive, but running Windows 10. Microsoft says DirectStorage will work like it does on Windows 10 and 11, with clear optimizations in the newer OS, but Square Enix says Forspoken DirectStorage support only applies to Windows 11.
Finally, we have one reviewer’s report, and it paints a less rosy picture. Wccftech tested Forspoken’s load times on an advanced gaming machine (Intel Core i7-12700KF, 16GB DDR4 RAM, GeForce RTX 4090, WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD) and got good but not outstanding results. Several scenes loaded in less than two seconds, but the longest took 7.5 and 9.5 seconds.
“The average load time (not provided by the test, so we calculated it manually) is 4.30 seconds, which is not in line with our expectations for DirectStorage compared to the one-second downloads available on PS5,” the site says.
Sunil Godhania of Square Enix stated yesterday on the Steam forums that “when you start the NVMe SSD, the boot time may end within 1-2 seconds. With a SATA SSD, this can take about 10 seconds,” although he noted that “boot times may vary depending on other hardware configurations and storage devices used.”
So what is really going on here? Does DirectStorage speed up NVMe boot times on Windows 10 and 11 despite Square Enix’s claim of Windows 11 exclusivity? Is the game so well optimized that it loads like lightning on Windows 10 even without official DirectStorage support? How important are your PC specifications? This Wccftech setup is definitely ferocious.
To be sure, we need to dig deeper and see how DirectStorage is implemented in more games, especially since other PC users are reporting that the game is a technical mess. (There is a demo version of Forspoken if you want to try it yourself.) However, a couple of things seem obvious. First, Forspoken has a damn impressive load time no matter what, especially when resuming from your last save, and we want to see more of that, no matter the reason. And secondly, no matter what happens with DirectStorage, gamers definitely want to play on NVMe SSDs rather than SATA drives, if at all possible. Our roundup of the best SSDs can help you pick the gem.