AAA File Sizes Are Getting Harder To Keep Up With

Once again, we’re back to discussing AAA games, and this time, it’s about those gigantic sizes. For the last couple of years, AAA gaming has aggressively pursued photorealistic visuals and 4K assets, all of which have led to some pretty absurd storage requirements. How is a person with an 800 GB base PS5 or a 1 TB HDD supposed to keep up with all this? I can’t have more than 2-3 games installed at a time these days.

For some people, this is pretty much a non-issue. They just keep the games they’re actively playing around, get rid of all else, and when needed, download new stuff after cleaning up. However, what about us hoarders and weak internet havers? I like to keep games in my hard drive because of that sweet nostalgia, and the intrusive thoughts that “I might get the urge to play this soon.” Well, I can’t do that with 150-200 GB games now, can I?

SSD Requirement Is A Cherry On Top

I remember the good old days of 20-30 GB max games, and I had a 2TB hard drive to hoard like crazy. From recent releases to past gems, I had everything. And then, along came the glorious size inflation, and 100+ GB became the norm for AAAs. After all, those amazing visuals and 4K assets need the space, right? And texture compression leads to a whole new set of problems. There’s definitely a logical explanation for these AAA sizes, but does that make the pain go away?

Download 2 Call of Dutys on your PS5 today, and the storage red alert pops up. Oh, and on top of the ever-increasing game sizes, the “SSD required” tag in system requirements these days introduces itself. Not only do AAAs take a lot of space, but their optimization on hard drives is so incredibly bad it’ll drive you nuts. Compared to a 100 GB on an HDD, 100 GB on an SSD is a whole other can of worms.

[COD] Filesize of every Call of Duty from COD 4 to now on PC with all gamemodes/DLC.
byu/acoolrocket inCallOfDuty

SSDs cost more than twice as much these days due to all the AI data center fiasco. A 2TB HDD is a lot more affordable than even a 500 GB SSD. For people on a limited budget, the illusion of choice is between “more space but more suffering” and “less space and more suffering”. It’s suffering nonetheless. I know that because I’ve been a victim of this. Try running Wuthering Waves on an HDD, and you’ll see what I mean.

Indies, My Beloved

With circumstances like these, can you blame me for increasingly preferring indies and smaller games these days? Take Slope, for example, a nice relaxing game that costs nothing. Miles ahead in gameplay engagement and creative mechanics, and extremely easy on your hardware, indies really are a godsend. These days, AAAs just look fancy; they put little effort towards imaginative gameplay risks, and that’s really hurting the industry.

Tell me this, are photorealistic visuals, 4K assets, and cinematic display so important that you stop being an engaging game? I’ll take gameplay over visuals any day. Gaming in the past was nowhere near this good-looking, but it certainly had that unbelievable gameplay hook. There’s no need for any more visual evolution now. Games already look good enough; it’s more creative gameplay and variety that we need.

Indie games today are more innovative than 90% of AAA games.
byu/magicworldonline inIndieDev

Plus, all these insane asset sizes and realistic visuals lead to the insane development costs and cycles. Wouldn’t it be better to get a small but entertaining game out early rather than keep the fans waiting for years just to release a movie? Just my humble suggestion, but I think AAAs can learn a lot from indies in this regard. Indie gaming is definitely this medium’s future, and where all the creativity lies these days. Gigantic sizes are but one part of the overall AAA gaming problem these days.