A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Call of Duty: Ghosts would be 50 GB in size. Now I don’t know about you all, but I thought that was a crazy number! While I do know a little about game design, I had no idea that the files could get that big with next-gen games. I was astonished!
Until I read an interview which pretty much blew my mind.
The folks at Eurogamer recently spoke with Michael van der Leeuw, the technical director for the upcoming game Killzone: Shadow Fall. During the interview, Michael revealed that the file sizes for Killzone: Shadow Fall could have been as big as 290 GB! He said,
“The bulk of it is textures… I think at some point the disc image that we were generating was around 180 gigs. And if we would have put all the levels in, which we didn’t, because then the disc image generator broke, it would have been around 290 gigs of data.”
Of course, the final version of the game was restructured down to only 39.7 GB, but the fact that these games are reaching these huge file sizes means a couple of things. First, it means that developers will have to start to look at how they structure data as we go further into the next-gen cycle. Secondly, it means that games will become even more realistic than they have ever been before.
Will we see games in the next few years that will break the 100 GB barrier? Probably. If we follow this current trend, I think it is highly likely that file sizes will reach over 100 GB within the next two years, with 150 to 200 GB being reached within the next five. With textures getting better and better, the amount of space required to hold all that data will get bigger and bigger.
Killzone: Shadow Fall is expected to release on November 15th for North America and November 29th in Europe.
What effect do you think these bigger file sizes will have on next-gen games? Let us know what you think below!
Published: Oct 24, 2013 11:39 pm