Current Events > The size of some games has become absurd.

(+) Yeah! (+)

NeonOPPAl posted...

I heard a conspiracy theory that they do that cuz then people are less likely to delete the game cuz they spent so much time downloading it, and they'll play it more and spend more on microtransactions or something >_>

I unironically subscribe to this theory, at least partially

many of the big-name popular games nowadays are designed as "endless" games. live-service stuff. the sorts of games that are not supposed to be just a thing you play and are done with, but a permanent fixture of your life. and people only have so much time to divide around between these things, so they're basically all direct competitors with each other regardless of the actual gameplay genre of the game. and then by blocking out them from installing any competitors, you're forcing them to spend time and money on your game instead since they're literally not playing anything else.

this wouldn't have worked as well in the past since there is no reason not to uninstall a game once you beat it. but so many games nowadays cannot be beaten and have no end state

Trumble posted...

That's literally a big HDD with extra steps.

No its not, because its centralized storage. If you have two gamers in your house they can both get it from there. Try doing that with a big hard drive without moving the big hard drive between machines. Its also different in that you can put the server / NAS in a separate room so you dont have to hear the hard drive noises while using your computer.

You can also save a ton of space if the games let you only download the language you want.

Uncharted 4 for example is like 130GB but you can save 27GB by deleting all the other language options except english.

PraetorXyn posted...

No its not, because its centralized storage. If you have two gamers in your house they can both get it from there. Try doing that with a big hard drive without moving the big hard drive between machines. Its also different in that you can put the server / NAS in a separate room so you dont have to hear the hard drive noises while using your computer.

I dunno I just have an external drive it's not very hard to move around. And you don't really use it, you just transfer things on and off and unplug it while not in use, so it's not like you're hearing it constantly

kirbymuncher posted...

I dunno I just have an external drive it's not very hard to move around. And you don't really use it, you just transfer things on and off and unplug it while not in use, so it's not like you're hearing it constantly

Yeah, so moving the big hard drive between machines like I said.

A file server / NAS is everything a hard drive is but better, because its centralized, the RAID (if youre using something besides UnRAID) gives better performance, you can put it where you dont hear it, you wont lose data if a single hard drive dies, etc., plus it can do more than store files.

Having a hard drive with a bunch of movies on it does little for you. Having a file server / NAS with a bunch of movies on it lets you stream those movies across your network with Jellyfin / Emby / Plex.

Cobra1010 posted...

You can also save a ton of space if the games let you only download the language you want.

Uncharted 4 for example is like 130GB but you can save 27GB by deleting all the other language options except english.

That just sounds like incompetence tbh. There's no way even if they supported all the languages in the world that an Uncharted game has 27GB of dialog. They must have done something stupid like packaged all the audio, including music and sound effects, into a package for each language.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJMRW771
got this for my Switch just so that I never have to worry ever again

PraetorXyn posted...

Yeah, so moving the big hard drive between machines like I said.

it weighs like 1kg at most it's not "big"

I'm sure a more complex setup like yours has advantages but they just don't seem to outweigh the effort, to me. I am perfectly happy to just get out and move around a small harddrive 2-3 times a month when I want to move files on/off of it

Sim Flight 2020 is at least 200 GB, it took around 3 hours to download, and wound up frying my power supply. It fantastic, but damn!! Really though it makes sense for that.

kirbymuncher posted...

it weighs like 1kg at most it's not "big"

Big likely meant capacity (Im not the one who originally used it), and likely designated a large capacity internal hard drive rather than an external one. With an internal hard drive, you have to power off both machines before you can do the swap, which adds an extra level of hassle.

I'm sure a more complex setup like yours has advantages but they just don't seem to outweigh the effort, to me. I am perfectly happy to just get out and move around a small harddrive 2-3 times a month when I want to move files on/off of it

What effort? You connect it to your network, go through a basic out of the box experience setup process like you do when you setup a new computer for the first time, map it as a network drive on your computer, then its just there and you can put stuff on it from any device on your network.

The real barrier is the expense, as for example, if you want to populate a 4 bay NAS with say, 4 20 TB Iron Wolf Pro drives, that would currently be $1640 in storage. Those drives frequently go on sale for $350 or so, but that would still be around $1400. But four of those drives in RAID 5 would give you 60 TB of usable storage. Considering a 4 TB NVMe drive is over $200, thats pretty reasonable IMO, as I spent close to that much for four 12 TB drives in 2019.

Mad-Dogg posted...

It'd plug and play. You basically just add more internal storage on top of the 600 something usable GB it comes with. (The PS5s default SSD is soldered into it so it can't be removed).

This is the one I bought:

Probably got to wait for another sale since it went back up from when I got it in october.

Oh does the ps5 have empty slots to add ssds?

A5modeu5 posted...

Oh does the ps5 have empty slots to add ssds?

Yeah. I had a spare 2 TB NVMe and sold it to my cousin for his PS5. I had to buy a be quiet heat sink for it, as unlike motherboards, the PS5 doesnt have a heat sink for the drive built in, so it has to have a heat sink.