I think the biggest culprit (at least for games I’ve played) this year has certainly been Jedi: Survivor. Great game but holy shit it does not warrant 150 GB of space. At all. Considering that Fallen Order wasn’t even 50 GB the fact that it’s sequel had over 100 more is just insane to me. Like, how is that even possible?! Survivor is the best example I can think of but plenty of games are also just eating away at my storage. I only own a few PS5 games (I think about 5-6) and I literally only have 10 GB of free space. So next time a new game comes out, some of my collection will unfortunately have to go on the “shelf” so to speak.
What’s weird too is that the recent Guardians of the Galaxy game was only around 30 GB. Which proves that not all modern games need to eat so much space as they do. So yeah that’s just my little rant about storage. It’s kinda crazy to me that in what seems like the span of just a few years games being around 100 GB is just the norm now. I know I’m about to give some “old man shouting at clouds” energy but I remember when buying an external hard drive was a choice and not a necessity for gamers.
Obviously as graphics and processing power improve, games will naturally get bigger. However, I think as AAA games are often rushed with large teams of developers, the last thing they prioritize is compressing and cleaning up what they can.
Often times, data is left in there that was canceled, so instead of removing it, developers will hide it. Or in the past, developers would compress whatever code they could to get their games to fit on cartridges or discs with limited space. Sometimes, that would involve making sacrifices, like reducing sound quality, or removing content, or completely foregoing a feature they had planned.
But these days, developers have much more freedom. They can do whatever they want in games without having to think twice about compression or sacrifices. I also agree that games don’t need to be as large as they are right now, and some code cleaning would be appreciated. But I think this is the new normal, and console developers will simply adapt by offering more storage, or encouraging gamers to take advantage of cloud gaming.
I mean storage is also cheaper than it’s ever been. It’s like inflation but for HDDs and SSDs
Honestly, if Cyberpunk 2077 can fit in 60gb, there’s not really an excuse to need more than that.
That game took me 70 hours to beat before the DLC, has a metric fuck ton of content (arguably too much content), and looks like an honest-to-god medium-high budget CGI movie rendering in real time on your PC. Regardless of any other faults the game may have, if they could fit that into 60gb, you don’t need more.