Game Install Size

[Keith Wallace]

So it's a statistic I've been wondering for some time, and it seems we finally know what games will eat up. Ignore the bias of this article and just look at the numbers, because that's all that matters here:

Xbox One Game Install Sizes Revealed: Digital Future Is Not Possible Right Now

We've got Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3 at 35 GB and Ryse at 47 GB. Those sizes are freaking insane, and that's the nice way of putting it. I was scared of the thought of 20-GB installs if people went all-digital. That Microsoft is only giving us 500 GB of internal storage and games eating up 8-10% of that each time is disappointing. That they then want to brand replacement drives and double their price is worse. It'll take most of us a couple of years to eat away at the post-formatting space (which will probably be around 450 GB), but for those who plan on getting several games at launch (like those who want to get Forza, Ryse, Dead Rising, Madden, Battlefield, and Call of Duty), you're looking at probably 60% of HDD space used right away. It's just CRAZY to think about the storage costs we'll endure later in the generation.

For a couple of years now, I've wished that physical game delivery would come in the form of a flash drive, and this has me wondering what the speed will be (in Mbps) for these installs. I doubt it gets to the 4 Gbps USB 3.0 theoretically runs at, so I can't help but wonder if we'd see companies start looking at USB 3.0 transfer on these consoles at some point, because the idea we'd wait a day for a 70-GB game to install later down the road is silly. Whatever happens, these install sizes are higher than I expected, and storage costs are going to SUCK when it's time to buy a proprietary drive from Microsoft.

 

[Coreldan]

Yes, I too find this really weird/concerning cos I wanted to go digital, but I believe all disc based games need to be installed too? Also, with all that talk about better ps4 Graphics, I doubt the numbers are better on PS.

 

[raul_junior]

So it's a statistic I've been wondering for some time, and it seems we finally know what games will eat up. Ignore the bias of this article and just look at the numbers, because that's all that matters here:

Xbox One Game Install Sizes Revealed: Digital Future Is Not Possible Right Now

We've got Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3 at 35 GB and Ryse at 47 GB. Those sizes are freaking insane, and that's the nice way of putting it. I was scared of the thought of 20-GB installs if people went all-digital. That Microsoft is only giving us 500 GB of internal storage and games eating up 8-10% of that each time is disappointing. That they then want to brand replacement drives and double their price is worse. It'll take most of us a couple of years to eat away at the post-formatting space (which will probably be around 450 GB), but for those who plan on getting several games at launch (like those who want to get Forza, Ryse, Dead Rising, Madden, Battlefield, and Call of Duty), you're looking at probably 60% of HDD space used right away. It's just CRAZY to think about the storage costs we'll endure later in the generation.

For a couple of years now, I've wished that physical game delivery would come in the form of a flash drive, and this has me wondering what the speed will be (in Mbps) for these installs. I doubt it gets to the 4 Gbps USB 3.0 theoretically runs at, so I can't help but wonder if we'd see companies start looking at USB 3.0 transfer on these consoles at some point, because the idea we'd wait a day for a 70-GB game to install later down the road is silly. Whatever happens, these install sizes are higher than I expected, and storage costs are going to SUCK when it's time to buy a proprietary drive from Microsoft.

holy crap if this had been the case when I bought my generation 1 ps3 I would've run out of space after only 2 games lol

 

[Keith Wallace]

Hy, with my original 360, I couldn't fit a single game on its 20-GB HDD.

 

[MobileVortex]

Well 1 game will def fit on a 20GB hdd, you should get 2, 3 at the most. Of course that's assuming u dont have anything other then your profile on it.

 

[Keith Wallace]

How exactly would games which start at 35 GB fit onto a HDD with a capacity of 20 GB? Please explain that to me, because I doubt it's a case where the 20 GB is binary and the 35 GB is decimal, and I doubt that base change would makeup for 15 GB of a storage gap anyway (bigger when formatting the drive is considered).

 

[thegooner]

Well, the 360 games are all on DVD so you could realistically get 2 or 3 on 20GB drive, but although it's true a single Xbox One game is too big, would there ever be a use case where there would only be a 20GB hard drive from the 360 attached to the Xbox One? Won't they all come with the 500GB drive anyway, therefore being able to get many more than one game installed locally.

This site here lists game sizes on the 360, pretty sure you'd get more than one onto the 360's 20GB drive:

http://www.stripesonfire.com/xbox-360-game-install-list/

 

[Keith Wallace]

All we were doing was comparing game size of the next generation to the HDD size of this generation, mostly to give an idea of how rapidly the install sizes have jumped to crazy heights.

 

[michfan]

Interesting that X1 game installs are equal to or greater than PS4 installs I've seen so far. The bulk of this memory is graphics. Native 720p shouldn't be anywhere near the size of native 1080p. Maybe MS still has a trick up their sleeves, perhaps the Day 1 patch will work some magic. Wording of resolution-gate statements has been current-tense, leaves the door open to this.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Well, we don't know how the third-party sizes look. Forza 5 is running in 1080p, and Ryse is at 900p. I don't know with Dead Rising 3, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's 1080p as well, since it's not necessarily the graphical masterpiece the others are viewed as.

 

[Coreldan]

Interesting that X1 game installs are equal to or greater than PS4 installs I've seen so far. The bulk of this memory is graphics. Native 720p shouldn't be anywhere near the size of native 1080p. Maybe MS still has a trick up their sleeves, perhaps the Day 1 patch will work some magic. Wording of resolution-gate statements has been current-tense, leaves the door open to this.

I was at this gaming expo today, both PS4 and Xbox One playable. There was no title on the PS4 available that would've looked better to my eyes than the Xbox games available. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm downvalueing PS4 game looks, but to me they looked just the same - really great.

It seems that the upscaler of Xbox One is somehow very good, since half of the games on PS seem to have higher resolution, but I can't tell it a few meters away on a full HD TV.

Also, I happened to check what the BF4 PC version cover said, it said 30GB required. PC version should be capable of better Graphics I believe, but perhaps there is some better compression?

 

[Keith Wallace]

Do we know the storage requirement for the Xbox version of Battlefield 4? I saw that the PS4 copy apparently takes 39.4 GB. I'm trying to think of why the console version(s) might take up more space, and the only half-thought I can come up with is the motion commands, but I don't think they'd take up much at all, and certainly not 9+ GB. Maybe it's bloated code from a sub-optimized development process or something, it's just weird.

 

[Coreldan]

Do we know the storage requirement for the Xbox version of Battlefield 4? I saw that the PS4 copy apparently takes 39.4 GB. I'm trying to think of why the console version(s) might take up more space, and the only half-thought I can come up with is the motion commands, but I don't think they'd take up much at all, and certainly not 9+ GB. Maybe it's bloated code from a sub-optimized development process or something, it's just weird.

I tried to specifically check that too today just to answer the same question you are wondering, as they sorta had those gamecovers on the shelves there for preordering, while it had some info on it, it didn't have the actual requirements sadly.