In Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a rift can pull Ratchet into another dimension while the action is still moving. Insomniac says the PS5’s SSD and custom I/O made that kind of rapid dimensional travel practical to design—not merely a way to shorten conventional loading screens.
How does Rift Apart use the PS5 SSD?
The SSD’s role is to help the game stream the data needed for a new place quickly enough to support abrupt changes in the world. Instead of presenting every dimensional jump as a pause followed by a loading screen, the game uses rifts, dimensional shifts and pocket dimensions as part of its playable flow.
Insomniac tied that design directly to PS5 hardware. In an August 2020 PlayStation.Blog post, creative director Marcus Smith wrote: “The SSD and custom I/O architecture around it allows us to send players across dimensions with near-instant speed.” The statement describes the SSD together with the system’s custom I/O, not the SSD acting alone. PlayStation.Blog, August 27, 2020.
In June 2021, Insomniac community director James Stevenson said the SSD’s speed allowed the team to consider “dimension hopping and portals that would whisk you across the galaxy.” Insomniac also described the game as built from the ground up for PS5. PlayStation.Blog, June 4, 2021.
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- Brand-new haptic feedback and adaptive trigger Technology creates astonishing physical sensations, bringing in-game actions to life in your hands via the dual sense wireless Controller.
What the dimensional jumps look like in play
The hardware idea becomes a game mechanic through more than one kind of transition. A Rift Tether lets a character pull toward a rift; dimensional shifts change the world around the player; pocket dimensions provide compact spaces to explore; and the story moves between planets and alternate versions of them. A 2021 gameplay preview identified these mechanics as expressions of the game’s dimensional premise. PlayStation.Blog, April 29, 2021.
These sequences show how Insomniac used rapid asset streaming as a design opportunity. They are not, by themselves, a benchmark: they do not reveal a measured transition time or show how the game would perform with a different storage system.
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- Feel in-game actions through the haptic feedback of the DualSense wireless controller.
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- Planet-hop at hyper-speed via the near-instant loading of the PS5 console's SSD.
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What Sony says the SSD and custom I/O do
Sony’s March 2020 PS5 hardware overview said the SSD and custom I/O were designed to help developers stream assets quickly and reduce loading barriers. Sony described the intended result as seamless, dynamic play and near-instant fast travel through large game worlds. PlayStation.Blog, March 18, 2020.
The same announcement’s specification table listed an 825GB SSD and 5.5GB/s raw read bandwidth. Those are figures from Sony’s 2020 hardware announcement; the bandwidth figure is a raw specification, not a measurement of Rift Apart’s sustained in-game throughput. Sony’s platform-level description explains the intended role of the storage and I/O system, but it does not quantify this game’s actual asset-streaming rate.
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- The intergalactic adventurers are back with Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart. Help them stop a robotic Emperor intent on conquering cross-dimensional worlds, with their own universe next in line.
- Built from the ground up by acclaimed studio insomniac games, go above and beyond with the mind-blowing speed and immersive features of the PS5 Console.
- Brand-new haptic feedback and adaptive trigger Technology creates astonishing physical sensations, bringing in-game actions to life in your hands via the dual sense wireless Controller.
Does the SSD make dimension-hopping possible, or just faster?
Insomniac’s account presents the SSD and custom I/O as enabling design ideas that would otherwise be harder to deliver without interruptions. Sony describes the platform as built to stream assets rapidly and support seamless transitions. Taken together, those statements mean the SSD’s contribution is not framed only as making a standard load screen shorter: the developers say it helped make rapid dimensional travel part of the game’s design.
That is a developer and platform account of design intent, not an isolated hardware test. The cited material does not separate the SSD’s contribution from custom I/O and the rest of the PS5, nor does it provide a controlled comparison or a measured loading-time dataset. It supports the claim that Insomniac designed around the system’s capabilities; it does not establish that the SSD alone caused every transition or prove a specific performance advantage over another implementation. Sony’s June 2020 PlayStation Studios overview likewise described the game’s seamless dimensional travel in the context of PS5’s SSD. PlayStation.Blog, June 11, 2020.
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- The intergalactic adventurers are back with a bang in Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart. Help them stop a robotic Emperor intent on conquering cross-dimensional worlds, with their own universe next in the firing line.
- Built from the ground up by acclaimed studio insomniac games, go above and beyond with the mind-blowing speed and immersive features of the PS5 Console.
- Includes: Ratchet & Clank: Rift apart, early unlock to carbonox armor set, early unlock to pixelizer weapon
Which effects come from other PS5 features?
The SSD claim is about streaming and transitions. It should not be used to explain every part of the presentation:
- SSD and custom I/O: Insomniac and Sony connect these to fast asset streaming, reduced loading barriers and rapid travel between spaces.
- Graphics hardware and ray tracing: These relate to rendering and visual effects, not the storage system’s role in delivering game assets.
- DualSense: Haptics and adaptive triggers provide tactile feedback and input effects; they are separate controller features.
- 3D audio: This is an audio feature, not an effect produced by the SSD.
Sony and Insomniac’s official descriptions make the game a useful example of designing around PS5’s storage and I/O capabilities. The most accurate takeaway is that the developers say those capabilities helped turn dimension-hopping into a playable device, while the available statements do not isolate the SSD as the sole cause or supply independent performance measurements.
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- Explore Never-Before-Seen Planets and Alternate Dimensions of Old Favorites - Enjoy a visually dazzling, interdimensional adventure, complete with familiar faces and some new allies – only on the PlayStation 5 console.
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- Experience the Shuffle of Dimensional Rifts and Dynamic Gameplay - Built from the ground up by acclaimed studio Insomniac Games, go above and beyond with the mind-blowing speed and immersive features of the PS5 console. Brand-new haptic feedback and adaptive trigger technology creates astonishing physical sensations, bringing in-game actions to life in your hands via the DualSense wireless controller.
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