Rumour abounds that Final Fantasy X will use the PlayStation 2’s hard drive. This will apparently take data from the game disc and portion it out on the fly to the CPU, meaning reduced load times between cut-scenes and battles, etc.
Acting as a cache, it is reported that Square has stated that load time between the exploration screen and the random battle screen has been reduced to one second from nine seconds.
Sony also mentioned that it will release the 40 GB hard drive in Japan in July and later in the rest of the world. The company also stated that a higher capacity drive is planned for the future.