Why are game file sizes so stupidly huge now?

I come from an era when games were on a tape or floppy disk and while I fully accept games are vastly more complex these days I struggle to see how games can justify updates that are hundreds of MB in size. Are programmers today just slapdash with code and just don't optimise anything any more as it just feels like even the most insignificant changes to a game require huge downloads.
Is it because they need to translate a game because I'm not seeing the problem here as games aren't exactly War and Peace on the story front so how hard can it be to translate the text or speech in something like Destiny 2 or even something with loads of speech like The Witcher 2.
Even Everbody's golf had updates in the hundreds in MB and they seem to do strawberry float all.

Just why?

Textures are big.

Don't get me wrong, ultra high res grass in games would have made me wet myself with glee and awe 20 years ago but I still fail to see how that takes such vast file sizes.

https://www.geek.com/games/nvidia-expla ... e-1607733/

I hope Nvidia had a 3 hour lecture about this with slideshows and charts showing just how glorious the grass is because it bloody deserved it.

The first titanfall was so huge because of uncompressed EFIGS audio files, which I guess publishers can't be bothered to compress.

It's a combination of hi-res textures, audio and video files, mixed with the fact that there aren't the same space restrictions that developers used to have on cartridges/floppy disks/tapes. Every console generally has at least 500gb HD these days and coupled with broadband internet they can get away with poor compression.

The Switch is the only console with real space restrictions and we've seen how keen third-parties are to use decent compression there.

I don't even see it as an issue. Unless you're one of those people who have to play the new games as soon as they launch at midnight then it's not a problem. I always have plenty of other stuff to play while a game installs, and I have more hard drive space than I know what to do with.

Uncompressed textures, video and audio files. Especially considering they're designed for HD video (at minimum) and surround sound. There's a lot of data there.

more heat than light wrote:I don't even see it as an issue. Unless you're one of those people who have to play the new games as soon as they launch at midnight then it's not a problem. I always have plenty of other stuff to play while a game installs, and I have more hard drive space than I know what to do with.

Everytime I buy a game now I have to delete something off the PS4 hard drive, it makes no difference whether it’s a new release or not. I had to free up over 100GB of space on my PS4 to install Wolfenstein on Monday. The other week it took 3 days to fully install Rainbow 6 Siege.

Is definitely an issue.

It’s an issue because hard drive space is finite and developers don’t seem to realise. Wasn’t there a patch for Gears of War the other day introducing new compression that bought the file size down below 100GB?

Having to install a game off a disc before you can actually play it is a bit crazy, too. We’re long past the days of plug-and-play consoles, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

the eponymous bollock wrote:
more heat than light wrote:I don't even see it as an issue. Unless you're one of those people who have to play the new games as soon as they launch at midnight then it's not a problem. I always have plenty of other stuff to play while a game installs, and I have more hard drive space than I know what to do with.

Everytime I buy a game now I have to delete something off the PS4 hard drive, it makes no difference whether it’s a new release or not. I had to free up over 100GB of space on my PS4 to install Wolfenstein on Monday. The other week it took 3 days to fully install Rainbow 6 Siege.

Is definitely an issue.

Can you not get a bigger hard drive?

Yes, if I want to pay for it and go through the hassle of setting it up.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with PS4, but on Xbox you can just get an external drive and stick it in one of the USB ports. Is it not that simple?

more heat than light wrote:Sorry, I'm not familiar with PS4, but on Xbox you can just get an external drive and stick it in one of the USB ports. Is it not that simple?

Didn't used to be, but it is now.

I live down a country lane with rural broadband.

Even demos are sometimes too much.

"OHHH a demo! I'll try that!"
>29gb
"I ain't waiting three days for a demo!"

Especially as I can't have iPlayer or Netflix on at the same time as the download kills it.
We're getting fibreoptic installed next year once they dig up the road.... C'monnnnn!

It's a tough one though, you've gotta mind that compressing everything to hell really messes up loading times in a lot of cases.

Considering how bad load times are now it’d be interesting to see a comparison between the two

LewisD wrote:I live down a country lane with rural broadband.

Even demos are sometimes too much.

"OHHH a demo! I'll try that!"
>29gb
"I ain't waiting three days for a demo!"

Especially as I can't have iPlayer or Netflix on at the same time as the download kills it.
We're getting fibreoptic installed next year once they dig up the road.... C'monnnnn!

Move to civilisation.

Unfortunately, there is no incentive or need to make games smaller. Developers have large capacity disks at their disposal and you have lots of hard drive space. If you don't have the space, that is now your problem. The other thing to remember is that these games are not written from scratch, they use middleware, various devkit libraries etc, loads of stuff that probably isn't needed in every game you play and is now an overhead sitting on your hard drive.

By contrast, I just downloaded Cuphead on the PC last night and it was only 1.9GB, making my first thought, "this can't be very good".

the eponymous bollock wrote:Yes, if I want to pay for it and go through the hassle of setting it up.

5 - 10 minute job, piss easy to do and the only thing you could say was hassle would be downloading games and installing them again. Fine if you have semi-decent broadband.

Why is my gut so stupidly huge now?

Why are game file sizes so stupidly huge now?

Who is online

Affiliates