I understand and agree to an extent that games should still be able to be stored on an HDD and played. But Starfield is an exception because of how massive it is. An SSD helps with the loading and transitioning when traveling between planets and new zones. An HDD is just too slow for this.

But SSDs are much cheaper now and keep getting cheaper. I spent $300 for a 1TB SATA 2.5 inch SSD only about 8 years ago and I saw on Amazon that there is a 1TB NVMe SSD for only $49. If you’re willing to spend $70 on a game, you should be willing to invest $49 for a SSD.