The Future Of Game File Sizes

[The Duke Of Nukes]

Hello! As games advance and get bigger graphically, they also get bigger in file size. We are almost approaching the end of this generation of consoles (I think), and we are just now starting to game at 4K (well, you console guys are, we PC players had 4K for a while now), and I can't stop but think of how big games will be next generation. When the PS5/"XB2" comes out, 4K gaming is going to be expected as the norm, and that is obviously going to take a hit on storage. HDDs of bigger sizes are expensive, and SDDs of the same size we have now are even more expensive, so I doubt that they will release consoles with SDDs or bigger HDDs, since they're already selling their consoles at a loss, and this will make their losses bigger. And don't even get me started on pre-rendered cut-scenes (if you don't know already, they're one of the things I despise the most). They're currently #1 biggest waste of space for any game that contains them. Most of the time half the game is just cut scenes (in terms of size), and this is just in 1080p! How big will the cut-scenes in 4K be? The total game size will be somewhere around 200GBs! Developers should get with the times, adapt, and start making all of their cut-scenes in real-time, I mean, come on! This isn't the early 2000's! Pre-rendered cut-scenes should've been thrown out with the PS2! Shadow Of War has a 4K cinematics pack, but I don't know how they got it to be relatively small. Did the game have very few pre-rendered cutscenes, or were they heavily compressed and look terrible (the better way they could've handled it is by making the real-time like a regular sane person would do)? How do you guys think the developers will tackle this problem in the future? Do you think the game sizes will be inefficiently big? Do you think that most developers will stop using pre-rendered cut-scenes (hopefully)? Tell me what you think.

[D9fred95]

I personally wouldn't want 200 GB sized games. Terabyte hard drives already can cost a pretty penny and I'd rather have a fun game that doesn't dominate my HDD.

[The Duke Of Nukes]

I personally wouldn't want 200 GB sized games. Terabyte hard drives already can cost a pretty penny and I'd rather have a fun game that doesn't dominate my HDD.

Neither do I, that's one of the reasons I would rather have the cut-scenes in real time. It saves tons of space.

[Ivan1997GTA]

 

I personally wouldn't want 200 GB sized games. Terabyte hard drives already can cost a pretty penny and I'd rather have a fun game that doesn't dominate my HDD.

Neither do I, that's one of the reasons I would rather have the cut-scenes in real time. It saves tons of space.

 

I really hope we don't have to install games on the console's hard drive when the next generation of gaming comes along. I think installing games on the console should be optional, not mandatory. With PC's, I can understand installation, but consoles, not really.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Ivan1997GTA

[Jason]

I was talking about this with a friend earlier actually after I went to download Rainbow Six Siege on PC while it's having a free weekend on Steam and it's 50gb (74gb with 4k textures) which isn't a quick download even with a good internet speed. Not to mention that 50gb is kinda craycray for a straight up multiplayer shooter with no story campaign. Hell, a while back I went to patch the MMO Black Desert Online after months of not playing it and it needed 150gb free space just for a patch.

 

It's getting kinda silly now to be honest, it started this gen when devs no longer needed to worry about DVD restrictions and immediately started using up the entirety of a BluRay disc meaning 500gb wasn't really enough for the now current-gen consoles after only a few months of owning one.

 

I really hope we don't have to install games on the console's hard drive when the next generation of gaming comes along. I think installing games on the console should be optional, not mandatory. With PC's, I can understand installation, but consoles, not really.

 

It's mandatory for the same reason we install them on PC though? It's way better for performance and loading to stream the game from a hard drive (or SSD) than it is from the disc. Disc based streaming is one of the reasons why things like pop-in was such a problem last-gen. The reason why installing was optional last-gen was because consoles didn't have hard drives big enough till close to the end of the generation. Reverting back to optional installs would be a step backwards for the industry quite frankly.

[GTA3Rockstar]

 

I really hope we don't have to install games on the console's hard drive when the next generation of gaming comes along. I think installing games on the console should be optional, not mandatory. With PC's, I can understand installation, but consoles, not really.

 

 

Consoles are computers nowadays lol

 

 

 

I personally wouldn't want 200 GB sized games. Terabyte hard drives already can cost a pretty penny and I'd rather have a fun game that doesn't dominate my HDD.

 

Well, when that happens, there will be Petabyte HDs. lol

 

 

 

 

It will work out, it's not like it won't. So why worry? Technology will grow and will become cheaper/bigger.

 

 

 

Back when the 360 was released, my brother was like "20GB hard drive? what is the point in that?" and now that wouldn't even hold a game lol

Edited February 18, 2018 by GTA3Rockstar

[luisniko]

Technology goes on. Back in the day, we couldn't imagine 45-60GB video games would be the standard size of today's. 14 years ago, PS2's memory card capacity was 8MB. Now a single PS4 save data normally is around 6MB-10MB, while some of the packaged one could reach up to 100MB.

 

By the time games have 250GB as the standard size, 1TB HDD will be cheaper. Average internet speed will be increased.

[D9fred95]

I kinda miss memory cards. I know they're obsolete and all but there was something great about those little things. Call it nostalgia but I liked them back in the day.

Edited February 19, 2018 by D9fred95

[Vanzant]

This is why I quit the PS4, got a new PC Gaming rig and started out with 4TB...

[El Dildo]

I don't know why anyone's worried...

 

as technology becomes more powerful it simultaneously becomes more efficient and affordable.

the very first terabyte harddrives were expensive af. and most people didn't need them. now they're just becoming the norm. as games require more space, space becomes cheaper to acquire.

 

also we will eventually just be cloud-gaming.

someday all you will have to do is just buy a monitor and a keyboard/mouse. then you'll remotely connect to ultra-powerful quantum computers which let you stream whatever software or hardware applications you might need. the only obstacle here to making this an immediate reality are the restrictions we have on bandwidth and internet speeds between the various providers. but someday we should all just be cloud computing and conserving as much of the resources/energy as possible. if you think about it, it's pretty goddamn inefficient for every individual person to have their own individual computer with completely different / random setups of conflicting hardware and software drivers. most business and industry and even entertainment would be better served by powerful cloud networks.

[Dryspace]

For those who complain or perhaps just worry about the present or possible future installation size of games, there are quite possibly facts that have not been considered. First, there are two main points:

 

1. After the transition of the AAA industry to console development in ~2008, the rate of increase of game size--which is a by-product of technical innovation--actually slowed from its previous trajectory.

 

2. The absolute installation size of present AAA games is nowhere near a size that could be reasonably considered problematic. In fact, the percentage of a typical HDD that a AAA game required 15 years ago is probably higher than many people realize or remember.

 

As to absolute installation size:

 

In 2004 when Half-Life 2 released, I had an 80 GB HDD. HL2's 4.5 GB was 6% of that drive (which is actually 74.4 GB formatted). Many people had 40 GB drives, making it 12%. For comparison, 6% of a 3 TB Western Digital HDD is 168 GB, and 12% is 335 GB. Even if you had a 160 GB drive back then, that 3% is equivalent to 84 GB of the 3 TB drive. This WD drive has been available for between $80 - 85 shipped from Newegg for over 2 years, so in the U.S. at least, cost is not an excuse.

 

Well, what about SSDs? First, though it may change in the near future, an SSD is a luxury for gaming, not a requirement. But having said that, the 1000 GB Samsung 850 EVO, which is a top SSD, has been available recently for $250 shipped. The 500 GB for $130 shipped. I have a 750 GB 840 EVO as an OS/applications volume that is exactly 4 years old. I have never been forced to uninstall a game in order to make room for a new one.

 

In fact, installed on the SSD at the moment are: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (55 GB), Battlefield 4 (47 GB), F.E.A.R. 2 (15 GB), Crysis 3 (14 GB), L.A. Noire (14 GB), Left 4 Dead 2 (13 GB), Mass Effect (11 GB), COD: Black Ops (~10 GB), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (~9 GB), Dishonored, Battlefield BC2, F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point, F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, Morrowind, Oblivion, Half-Life 2: Update, King's Quest, Unreal 2, Project CARS: Pagani Edition, BloodRayne, Giants - Citizen Kabuto, Hitman 2, Prey, Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, and at least 40 more games, as well as 39 game demos including The Surge Demo (15 GB) and Dying Light Demo (11 GB).

 

I have 173 GB free, and that's not counting the 10% of the SSD's capacity (~70 GB) that I set aside in Samsung Magician.

 

If AAA development for the PC had continued, game sizes would be well over 100 GB already, and it would be glorious, and it would not be a problem.

 

I've explained that storage space is not an issue, but what about acquiring a 150 GB game in the first place? Well, Blu-ray discs store at least 50 or 100 GB of data, and driving to a store or placing an order online is something most people are equal to. D'oh! It's too bad that the majority of consumers short-sightedly determined that the right to ownership of one's own copy of a game was worth giving up in order to avoid the "hassle" of dealing with game discs.

 

It's almost funny: Publishers were eager to push "digital distribution" in order to combat piracy, but requiring downloads places an incentive to keep game sizes low enough that downloading is actually feasible for most of the market, in terms of download speeds and bandwidth caps. Of course, this also means that piracy is feasible.

 

If physical media had not been all but abandoned--if PC publishers had not been too stingy to pay the Blu-ray licensing fees--the publishers could have thwarted piracy by pushing technical innovation and steadily increasing the size of games. Thus, gamers would benefit from the innovation, and developers would benefit because it's faster and easier to install a 180 GB game from a disc or three than to pirate it.

 

In short, the only possible issue with the distribution of large-file-size games has been artificially created by the rush to abandon physical media. It's a problem that doesn't have to exist.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Dryspace