5 ms·

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not invent

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not inventing an (admittedly clever and nice) man in the middle streaming things to you in byte-sized chunks.

dangus 3y ago
That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally. All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude. I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete. Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typical AAA title you can get a 2TB pcie nvme tlc SSD. I also see cable companies like Xfinity offering speeds above 1Gbps over plain copper. They’re selling speeds that consumer WiFi can’t even handle. Even the laziest monopoly cable companies have rolled out new docsis versions at minimal cost that deliver really impressive speeds on their ancient copper networks. If you saturate WiFi 6 at 600mbps a 100GB download is only going to take around 30 minutes if not less.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  That assumes that the data is being used responsibly. Leftover assets that weren't properly cleaned before shipping the build? Uncompressed media that could be? (I recall that even well into the 2000s games often came with basically uncompressed CD audio tracks)
  - Guvante 3y ago
    To be fair audio compression wasn't exactly great in early 2000 and if the CD was required to play you could just not install the audio.
  - dangus 3y ago
    It just doesn’t bother me. If a game wasted something like 500GB of storage space that means it’s temporarily borrowing $20 worth of SSD storage. (I think the uncompressed audio was usually because of CPU decoding restraints, and the fact that a typical PlayStation game had such a crazy amount of “free” storage to work with on a disc compared to the amount of data needed to create the game and its world - might as well toss in voice acting and FMV video)
    - eviks 3y ago
      you also forgot permanently spending $X worth of time and inconvenience getting that 500GB
      - imtringued 3y ago
        When you realize NVMe turns your high performance 6 Gbps SATA ports off and you have to migrate 500GB of data from one SSD to another over 3gbps... and it gets slower once you consider that you as a software developer have millions of tiny files that take even longer to copy over. Oh yeah also your boot entry doesn't work so you have to fix that one up. Upgrading from 500GB to 2TB easily cost 4 hours plus letting it run overnight to avoid wasting time on the transfer.
- imtringued 3y ago
  >Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typical AAA title you can get a 2TB pcie nvme tlc SSD. As someone who bought such an SSD, I'm surprised that AAA titles cost more than 100€ nowadays.
- sombragris 3y ago
  > Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs Also stupidly difficult when you have a preconfigured device such as a laptop. I think anything that would require you to modify your equipment's hardware configuration is not much of an argument.
ksec 3y ago
Virtual texturing ( or people may have heard of MegaTextue ) meant we could easily scale 100s GB for high quality Graphics. We are already quite CPU bound in the PS5 era sp I dont see super-compression to happen. The only way to solve this would be something like Generative Graphics. But I think that is an worst option than large storage space.
markx2 3y ago
Agreed. I am not condoning piracy, but when looking at game sizes, go check out fitgirl repacks. Right now there is a Steam game there reduced from 20GB to 10GB. Another is reduced from 3.5GB to 1.1GB. The downloads from there are consistently and significantly reduced. If a pirate can do that, why not a game company? or Steam?
- Lvl999Noob 3y ago
  If pirates can reduce the size, I would imagine that the sizes are from DRM or obfuscation.
  - msz-g-w 3y ago
    They are not.
- underyx 3y ago
  A lot of repacks cut all languages except English.
  - markx2 3y ago
    Cutting languages makes perfect sense. Why should I have to download gigs of languages I will never use? Just give me the language option at the time of download? That of course makes for more work for the game companies.
- c-hendricks 3y ago
  IME fitgirl repacks trade download time for extraction time. I've purchased and downloaded some games while waiting for the same game to extract.

dangus 3y ago

That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally. All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude. I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete. Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typical AAA title you can get a 2TB pcie nvme tlc SSD. I also see cable companies like Xfinity offering speeds above 1Gbps over plain copper. They’re selling speeds that consumer WiFi can’t even handle. Even the laziest monopoly cable companies have rolled out new docsis versions at minimal cost that deliver really impressive speeds on their ancient copper networks. If you saturate WiFi 6 at 600mbps a 100GB download is only going to take around 30 minutes if not less.

hakfoo 3y ago
That assumes that the data is being used responsibly. Leftover assets that weren't properly cleaned before shipping the build? Uncompressed media that could be? (I recall that even well into the 2000s games often came with basically uncompressed CD audio tracks)
- Guvante 3y ago
  To be fair audio compression wasn't exactly great in early 2000 and if the CD was required to play you could just not install the audio.
- dangus 3y ago
  It just doesn’t bother me. If a game wasted something like 500GB of storage space that means it’s temporarily borrowing $20 worth of SSD storage. (I think the uncompressed audio was usually because of CPU decoding restraints, and the fact that a typical PlayStation game had such a crazy amount of “free” storage to work with on a disc compared to the amount of data needed to create the game and its world - might as well toss in voice acting and FMV video)
  - eviks 3y ago
    you also forgot permanently spending $X worth of time and inconvenience getting that 500GB
    - imtringued 3y ago
      When you realize NVMe turns your high performance 6 Gbps SATA ports off and you have to migrate 500GB of data from one SSD to another over 3gbps... and it gets slower once you consider that you as a software developer have millions of tiny files that take even longer to copy over. Oh yeah also your boot entry doesn't work so you have to fix that one up. Upgrading from 500GB to 2TB easily cost 4 hours plus letting it run overnight to avoid wasting time on the transfer.
imtringued 3y ago
>Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typical AAA title you can get a 2TB pcie nvme tlc SSD. As someone who bought such an SSD, I'm surprised that AAA titles cost more than 100€ nowadays.
sombragris 3y ago
> Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs Also stupidly difficult when you have a preconfigured device such as a laptop. I think anything that would require you to modify your equipment's hardware configuration is not much of an argument.

ksec 3y ago

Virtual texturing ( or people may have heard of MegaTextue ) meant we could easily scale 100s GB for high quality Graphics. We are already quite CPU bound in the PS5 era sp I dont see super-compression to happen. The only way to solve this would be something like Generative Graphics. But I think that is an worst option than large storage space.

markx2 3y ago

Agreed. I am not condoning piracy, but when looking at game sizes, go check out fitgirl repacks. Right now there is a Steam game there reduced from 20GB to 10GB. Another is reduced from 3.5GB to 1.1GB. The downloads from there are consistently and significantly reduced. If a pirate can do that, why not a game company? or Steam?

Lvl999Noob 3y ago
If pirates can reduce the size, I would imagine that the sizes are from DRM or obfuscation.
- msz-g-w 3y ago
  They are not.
underyx 3y ago
A lot of repacks cut all languages except English.
- markx2 3y ago
  Cutting languages makes perfect sense. Why should I have to download gigs of languages I will never use? Just give me the language option at the time of download? That of course makes for more work for the game companies.
c-hendricks 3y ago
IME fitgirl repacks trade download time for extraction time. I've purchased and downloaded some games while waiting for the same game to extract.