File size. Just how big will games get.

You know with games getting better looking every year and all having higher quality assets and so on.
Just how big could a game download become.
Will we ever see a 1TB game or is that kind of prediction complete nonsense?

 

Many many considerations, a big topic.
A sort of summary of the bleedin' obvious :

What company can acquire the resources necessary to compile that much data into one game in a good timeframe?
That game has got to outsell everything and may need other ways of generating revenue to remain viable.
How long will it take to create such a game?
Managing more staff and resources to release faster will be some task and exponentially more costly.

AI will be employed to do a lot of the graft but will be under the scrutiny of gamers so the AI will need to be worked on at the same time, wont be cheap.

Where AI cannot be used, many humans will be needed of high calibre, the least number of screwups essential, this wont be cheap.

Eventually games will nearly all be AI generated (before release, not necessarily while playing) but theres quite a way to go before that.

...

My feeling is, before games become that size they will be played through a streaming service.
Local cache servers will reduce latency and save the internet backbone from breakdown.
It will require a much larger proportion of internet users to have much faster connections.
Gaming servers and networks must not be prone to malicious take down.
So a way to go on this front too.

 

We are getting there slowly
STALKER 2’s Launch File Size Might Just be the Biggest Ever
https://www.google.com/amp/s/wccftech.com/stalker-2-file-size/amp/

 

Games still use a lot of redundant data, to accelerate data loading in HDDs.
The PS5 already has several games that are almost half the size of their Xbox and PC equivalents. This is due in part because of compression and because there is less redundant data.
Maybe with Direct Storage, studios might decide to remove redundant data from PC games. And maybe even some data compression similar to Xbox's Velocity Architecture and Sony's kraken compression.

 

@Mufflore, Good answer, kinda what I was looking for. Games are getting so expensive now.
@Undying , Damn have you seen how much that game will cost on release date. Its practically for the rich only.
@Horus-Anhur , Yes. Does seem that PC compression has gone out of the window for now as asset hydration takes time and direct storage as you say is next gen stuff and could solve some file size problems.
Lads.

 

of course we will
but not before 4/8tb ssd's become standard
I'm sure I never saw a 120gb game like rdr2 in 2014 when I bought my first ssd,but it was 250GB and still cost more than 1TB nvme's of today.

 

Does it really matter

 

Of course it matters. Are you willing to pay 1500 euros to be able to install 8 games.

Rocket 4 Plus 8TB is officially released, yours for $1,499.99

 

1. show me eight one terabyte games
2. you know you can get a 1TB nvme for 1/20th of this 8tb one, not one eighth

overreact much ?
yesterday I learned that you need a 5900x to keep up with this castrated thing they put into consoles because of some "to the metal" theory, now I need 1500 dollars to install eight games.

 

Look at the first post, where the OP poses the question of games reaching 1TB. That's why I said that file size matters.
Mind you this is mere speculation, like the vestibule posted at the start of the conversation.
And of course, a bit of an extreme scenario.

True. But are you going to have 1 drive for each game?

 

where are those 1tb games of yours ?

the real reality:
back in 2014 I bought my fist ssd, 840evo 250gb sata,for what was 101eur then.Last week I got a sn570 1tb nvme for 76eur.Back then I played far cry 3 and ac4bf, 20gb and 30gb, so let's say 25gb for open world games,more or less.Now I play cyberpunk 70gb, rdr2 120gb and valhalla 77gb,about 90gb average.
So not only the gb/dollar value of drives improved quicker (12gb/eur from 2.5gb/eur based on the drives I quoted,that is 4.8x) than game size grew (3.6x),so by over 30%,you're getting a product that's a lot faster too.
so in the end,it costs you about 20-30% less to install the same amout of games than it used to.

and on the technical side,you just couldn't fill the sata ssd's from the past over 70-80% without major slowdowns to nand write.they'd literally write at 10-15mb/s when the disk space turned red and reads took a noticeable hit.
now check bics5 and how that handles full drives.

people of g3d,keep your pants on and do the maths before you spread FUD.

 

Mate, it's an hypothetical case that we are discussing, about whether games will reach bigger sizes.
No one is saying this is a problem now.

 

hypothetical would include not only game size increase but improvement to storage too.
this is an exaggeration,not a hypothetical.

you're inflating game size by 10x then use that on the most expensive drive of today.
installing 8 games will cost you less than 80eur, not 1500.

 

60$ for a normal version but like with any game deluxe versions go way higher becouse it has future dlc's included.

 

Yes, hyperbole is sometimes used to discuss things.
You are taking this discussion too seriously and too literal.

 

there's hardly anything that's worth 60 dollars launch price.
most of them I feel like I got ripped off by paying 30.

because of the questions you asked me.
I would never bring that up on my own.

 

I felt like Dying Light 2 worth it. It was last game i spent 60$ on it. Almost at 60h into it and still didnt finish it.

 

every playtime is bloated nowadays cause of tedious games have gotten.
I'd pay extra to make games like Valhalla shorter cause I'll be clinically dead from boredom if I try to finish it anytime soon.

 

Mate, you were the one that quoted me first.

 

yes
it was the question about overreacting.
so just admit that you did.