As gamers, we’re seeing a growing increase in the file size required for games. It’s not just on PC, this trend has also started to plague the consoles that support Blu-Ray now as well. So does file size really translate into a better quality game..? Is there a wider issue of not enough storage on consoles to handle these larger games now that we’re moving towards a more digital model? Those are two questions I’d like to answer.
Ever since RAGE was released back in 2011 with the use of the id Tech 5 engine and it’s included “Megatexturing” feature, the amount of Hard Drive (HDD) space that most video games require today is typically upwards from 15GB. There are a few ways that developers can reduce the size of their titles. One way is to remove languages that aren’t selected upon during installation. Games bought on Steam or other DRM platforms will download all the language files supported for them rather than just the language selected. So if you had a choice to remove the languages you didn’t want, it could really cut down on the total file size.
A game like The Evil Within on PC was about 25GB at launch, today it’s 58GB with all the DLC downloaded. If you could delete all non English files (assuming you’re an English speaker) within the game you could save about 4GB if they weren’t downloaded. It’s not really that much of a difference. But just think about it this way, if you have 400+ games and about 345 of which are installed currently, saving that extra space may allow you to install another game of similar file size.
It all boils down to the fact that gamers seem to be okay with the idea of a large game but if games keep growing in size and console storage stays where it is or cloud storage doesn’t become more prevalent we could have a real storage crisis on our hands. The day of the CD or DVD medium is fast ending, but the console makers don’t seem to keen to help it die. Just look at the latest storage sizes on the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. Is 500 GB to 1 TB their idea of mass storage? Most people I know aren’t buying CD’s in the store anymore but are going all digital and just downloading their games (sales numbers may still show large numbers of people buying in store though, so my experience may not be the norm yet). If games keep growing, we’ll have to change the model by either bumping up on storage or focusing more on cloud storage and making game streaming better.
Although cloud storage might seem like a great solution to this problem that idea might be handicapped by being marketed as a “paid” only option. Which means only PS+ or Xbox Live subscribers will be able to utilize it. There is also a possibility of having expandable storage, for an additional charge a player could get X or Y amounts of storage in the cloud. This too would probably be tethered to a PS + subscription, as it probably should be.
However, there shouldn’t be any additional charges and it should be part of the subscription. This, of course, isn’t the most ideal solution for users that may have less than perfect internet. If cloud storage is going to be a viable option to this file size and storage issue, they’re going to have to figure out a way to make it feasible and inexpensive and build it into their existing structure, like through the PS + subscription.
There is another issue here. What if console makers do decide to fix the file size and storage issue with the cloud and – together with developers – decided to make cloud storage a requirement to play games? This is great for people with high speed internet but what about people like me who live in a country that has poor quality internet (i.e. Australia, It’s okay I live there)? That could cut off a large section of the population.
I have over 400 games on Steam alone which takes up about 3TB (terabytes) of storage space and a total of 6TB of internal storage and 1TB worth of external storage on my PC. I have 100GB left due to recording media and games using other forms of DRM like Origin or Uplay. It adds up fast guys. With console gaming mimicking PC gaming every day and people building up their digital wheelhouse’s on their consoles, it’s not unrealistic for my PC requirements to become a reality on consoles someday.
Personally, I used to associate large file sizes with better quality textures and that sort of thing but in reality texture quality hasn’t really jumped that far yet as file sizes have. When I compared last year’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, a newer game with a file size of 53GB, to one of its four-year-old predecessors, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, it doesn’t look that much better. I’m not seeing the improvement.
Does this come down to compression of assets versus non-compressed assets? Are they simply not compressing the game files like they used to? That may be what it looks like to be fair. Maybe 53 GB is the actual “real” size of the game, uncompressed in all its glory. I’ve come across or played many games that have extremely large file sizes but the overall visual quality doesn’t seem to correspond. Mad Max for the PC is a prime example, you can see the specs below.
Most of the Mad Max footage I’ve seen has been in a desert with next to nothing on the horizon. So why on Earth is this game 32GB?
Mad Max on PC Requirements listed below.
Recommended:
OS: 64 bit: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
RAM: 8 GB RAM
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (3 GB Memory or higher) or AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3 GB Memory or higher)
DirectX: DX11
HDD: 32 GB available space
Before I continue, I’d like to mention that listing a GTX 760 with parenthesis “3GB Memory or Higher” is a little counter productive seeing that GPU had a standard 2GB of VRAM. We seem to be in a continual upward spiral when it comes to both PC specs and file sizes required to store games on our HDD’s. I digress, though, as PC specs are a completely separate topic altogether.
What I’d like everyone who is reading this article to do is to the question the file sizes required for your games. Consoles may not have this issue as much because the majority of sales are on retail versions so you don’t have to store the entire game on the console just yet (correct me if I’m wrong). I suspect, as I mentioned earlier that the trend will be more towards digital and away from retail. So this will become a bigger problem as time goes on. Why should you question this as a major issue? Simply put I shouldn’t have to “waste” upwards of 20+GB on a game if it doesn’t really require it.
If the game’s size is being kept down by video clip resolution (bitrate plays a large factor in the file size) then there are ways to compress the footage to a reasonable size without losing video quality. If a game was photo-realistic, then I’d expect everything to still be compressed as far as possible to retain the quality, but that doesn’t mean I’d prefer a game that’s completely uncompressed.
I could talk about this subject all day, but at the end of the day, the larger games get the more space is required so in turn you need to “BUY” larger HDD’s to store the data and the cycle continues but instead of buying a game, installing it and playing it you may need to buy a new HDD first. This really puts the onus on console makers to either bump up the storage or consider their options rather than forcing us the consumer to just “deal with it.” The Cloud solution or streaming games might be an option to look at too. But until this is dealt with more seriously by the console makers or developers, we could have a looming storage crisis on our hands. Let’s hope someone makes a move to fix this.
Let us know what your thoughts are on large video games and how it might impact storage moving forward, I’m curious what other people think about this subject.
Here I am in the midst of the crisis looking for help. They need to go back to the good old days just a little. I understand that in order to get the new and best you put time and energy, which translates to GB. However, you have to do something to challenge the disparity between the 7.5GB black ops 1, and the hundreds and hundreds of GB in Modern Warfare 2019. I beg the community to also beg: There has to be an in between. Especially because black ops one isn’t far from the quality of Modern Warfare 2019. Graphics are far, and it’s glitchy, but there has to be a better solution. I don’t even like the new graphics anyway.
I really don’t see any issues with the larger install sizes for games. Yeah, install sizes have gone up over time, but simultaneously the price for storage has been steadily decreasing. If I run out of HDD space on my PC, so what, I can just buy another 1TB HDD for less than the price of a new game. Also, with platforms like Steam, if I’m low on HDD space, I just look at my library, sort my games by the size on disk, and then just delete the games that are taking up a lot of space that I’m no longer playing. If I still want to play them, I can re-download the game again. It may take a little bit of time if the game is large, but so what. I mean honestly how many games is any one person going to be jumping between at any given time? Maybe 12 if you literally have nothing else to do but play games, but for me its more like 3 games.
Also compressing assets for a video game is a double-edged sword. Sure it saves space on the disk, but it also takes processing power to constantly be decompressing textures, and leads to a decrease in game performance, and issues like texture pop-in where upon loading a level, certain textures look horribly low rez until the system has completed the process of decompressing the texture, then it suddenly appears in full resolution.
I’d rather lose a few extra gigs of HDD space and not have to experience ingame slow-down every time a new texture is decompressed.
As for the languages, that is a good suggestions, I’m surprised its not just considered a programming best practice to only have the game install the files needed for the language the game will be played in. Especially considering that the audio assets for VO can take up a sizable amount of space.
Yes you may have the option to redownload said game but you are also forgetting about a large portion of the globe that do not have access to Unlimited internet, thus not being able to download large games constantly. Sure that is one situation but it is still a valid one.
I fear that people aren’t really understanding the message I am trying to convey here, I’ve seen people get to court up on my use of “Storage Crisis”, although that is in the title and within the article that isn’t my actual message. My message is that games have become larger for no observable reason and I think that is a problem, now I’m not saying your wrong (you are entitled to have your own opinion as well I just want to make it clear that my main message isn’t that PC or Console is actually in a Storage Crisis but more so games are getting larger).
Decompressing texture files or assets isn’t that much of a task for most modern CPU’s, this process can be counteracted by the way the developer loads the level and ultimately it comes down to the resolution of the assets and how many polygons are on screen. Decompressing images is nothing when it comes to the amount of polys on screen. If say for example a game from 2011 has about 2 million polygons on screen and was having performance issue… in my experience that can be blamed on the devs themselves (Crytek) for adding to many polygons on screen at any given time without compensating correctly or spreading them out throughout the level. Now I’m not a developer but I have picked up on a few things that devs have done over the years… some haven’t been good things.
You mention texture pop-in in relation to decompressing of textures… well for games like RAGE, The Evil Within or Wolfenstein: The New Order that comes down to specifically what engine they used, in those cases id Tech 5… which is known to have quite the texture pop-in issues and horrible resolution textures. Which again isn’t justified by the actual texture resolution. Sure with RAGE you can up the textures to say 16k and fix the performance quite drastically via a config edit. The main reason behind that game being playable was due to being able to alter most of the engine presets and/or values to something that is more reasonable, devs seem to crank the dial up way to high and that has become a problem for newer games as well.
I’d love to only be able to download/select the language files for the language I speak… it would save me the extra space and the pointless extra download. It is a shame that devs haven’t started doing this on the PC yet?
If you can prove an instance of texture pop-in being caused by decompressing textures I’d love to see it, I just don’t think that is the case these days… although I could be wrong.
I really don’t see any issues with the larger install sizes for games. Yeah, install sizes have gone up over time, but simultaneously the price for storage has been steadily decreasing. If I run out of HDD space on my PC, so what, I can just buy another 1TB HDD for less than the price of a new game. Also, with platforms like Steam, if I’m low on HDD space, I just look at my library, sort my games by the size on disk, and then just delete the games that are taking up a lot of space that I’m no longer playing. If I still want to play them, I can re-download the game again. It may take a little bit of time if the game is large, but so what. I mean honestly how many games is any one person going to be jumping between at any given time? Maybe 12 if you literally have nothing else to do but play games, but for me its more like 3 games.
Also compressing assets for a video game is a double-edged sword. Sure it saves space on the disk, but it also takes processing power to constantly be decompressing textures, and leads to a decrease in game performance, and issues like texture pop-in where upon loading a level, certain textures look horribly low rez until the system has completed the process of decompressing the texture, then it suddenly appears in full resolution.
I’d rather lose a few extra gigs of HDD space and not have to experience ingame slow-down every time a new texture is decompressed.
As for the languages, that is a good suggestions, I’m surprised its not just considered a programming best practice to only have the game install the files needed for the language the game will be played in. Especially considering that the audio assets for VO can take up a sizable amount of space.
Yes you may have the option to redownload said game but you are also forgetting about a large portion of the globe that do not have access to Unlimited internet, thus not being able to download large games constantly. Sure that is one situation but it is still a valid one.
I fear that people aren’t really understanding the message I am trying to convey here, I’ve seen people get to court up on my use of “Storage Crisis”, although that is in the title and within the article that isn’t my actual message. My message is that games have become larger for no observable reason and I think that is a problem, now I’m not saying your wrong (you are entitled to have your own opinion as well I just want to make it clear that my main message isn’t that PC or Console is actually in a Storage Crisis but more so games are getting larger).
Decompressing texture files or assets isn’t that much of a task for most modern CPU’s, this process can be counteracted by the way the developer loads the level and ultimately it comes down to the resolution of the assets and how many polygons are on screen. Decompressing images is nothing when it comes to the amount of polys on screen. If say for example a game from 2011 has about 2 million polygons on screen and was having performance issue… in my experience that can be blamed on the devs themselves (Crytek) for adding to many polygons on screen at any given time without compensating correctly or spreading them out throughout the level. Now I’m not a developer but I have picked up on a few things that devs have done over the years… some haven’t been good things.
You mention texture pop-in in relation to decompressing of textures… well for games like RAGE, The Evil Within or Wolfenstein: The New Order that comes down to specifically what engine they used, in those cases id Tech 5… which is known to have quite the texture pop-in issues and horrible resolution textures. Which again isn’t justified by the actual texture resolution. Sure with RAGE you can up the textures to say 16k and fix the performance quite drastically via a config edit. The main reason behind that game being playable was due to being able to alter most of the engine presets and/or values to something that is more reasonable, devs seem to crank the dial up way to high and that has become a problem for newer games as well.
I’d love to only be able to download/select the language files for the language I speak… it would save me the extra space and the pointless extra download. It is a shame that devs haven’t started doing this on the PC yet?
If you can prove an instance of texture pop-in being caused by decompressing textures I’d love to see it, I just don’t think that is the case these days… although I could be wrong.
You probably won’t believe this but my Halo: Masterchief Collection holds up about half of my storage on the XB1. Good read!
…how much is that lol
You probably won’t believe this but my Halo: Masterchief Collection holds up about half of my storage on the XB1. Good read!
…how much is that lol