3 ms·

it seems wild the state of games and development today... imagine 131GB out of 154GB of data was not needed....

by habbekrats 10mo ago

wvbdmp 10mo ago
The whole world took a wrong turn when we moved away from physical media.
- breve 10mo ago
  Hard drives and optical discs are the reason they duplicated the data. The duplicated the data to reduce load times.
  - habbekrats 10mo ago
    do they even sell disc of these game?...
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      They do, but it's irrelevant to performance nowadays since you're required to install all of the disc data to the SSD before you can play. The PS3/360 generation was the last time you could play games directly from a disc (and even then some games had an install process).
      - Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
        I believe even then it was already "most", at least for the PS3; that was the era where always-online devices became the norm, where game developers were more eager to release patches after release, etc.
- tetris11 10mo ago
  In terms of ownership, yes absolutely. In terms of read/write speeds to physical media, the switch to an SSD has been unsung gamechanger. That being said, cartridges were fast. The move away from cartridges was a wrong turn
  - BizarroLand 10mo ago
    I hate it when you buy a physical game, insert the disk, and immediately have to download the game in order to play the game because the disk only contains a launcher and a key. Insanity of the worst kind.
    - crest 10mo ago
      Or the launch day patch is >80% the size of the game, but I don't want to go back to game design limited by optical media access speeds.
    - hbn 10mo ago
      Nintendo is pretty good for putting a solid 1.0 version of their games on the cartridges on release. But on the other hand, the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long as they keep the servers online so you could download a digital purchase. I've kinda given up on physical games at this point. I held on for a long time, but the experience is just so bad now. They use the cheapest, flimsiest, most fragile plastic in the cases. You don't get a nice instruction manual anymore. And honestly, keeping a micro SD card in your system that can hold a handful of games is more convenient than having to haul around a bunch of cartridges that can be lost. I take solace in knowing that if I do still have a working Switch in 20 years and lose access to games I bought a long time ago, hopefully the hackers/pirates will have a method for me to play them again.
      - wtallis 10mo ago
        > the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long You've been paying attention to the wrong sources for information about NAND flash. A new Switch cartridge will have many years of reliable data retention, even just sitting on a shelf. Data retention only starts to become a concern for SSDs that have used up most of their write endurance; a Switch cartridge is mostly treated as ROM and only written to once.
- jayd16 10mo ago
  The (de)-optimization exists, essentially, because of physical media.
maccard 10mo ago
This isn't unique to games, and it's not just "today". Go back a decade [0] find people making similar observations about one of the largest tech companies on the planet. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066338
- lynnharry 10mo ago
  > FB App is 114MB in size, but loading this page in Chrome will use a good 450MB, idk how they managed that. This reminds me of the old days when I check who's using my PC memory every now and then.
- Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
  And that's consumer apps, having only glimpsed in the world of back-end / cloud shenanigans, there's heaps of data being generated and stored in datacenters. Useful data? Dunno, how useful are all access logs ever? But it's stored because it's possible, easy, and cheap. Unlike older games, where developers would hide unused blocks of empty data for some last-minute emergency cramming if they needed it.
high_na_euv 10mo ago
It was needed. Just the trade off wasnt worth it.
- Zambyte 10mo ago
  It was wanted and intentionally selected, but it wasn't needed.
- Tepix 10mo ago
  I'd argue it was incompetence.
- red-iron-pine 10mo ago
  it wasn't needed -- need means "must have" they're a fantastically popular franchise with a ton of money... and did it without the optimizations. if they never did these optimizations they'd still have a hugely popular, industry leading game minor tweaks to weapon damage will do more to harm their bottom line compared to any backend optimization

it seems wild the state of games and development today... imagine 131GB out of 154GB of data was not needed....

wvbdmp 10mo ago

The whole world took a wrong turn when we moved away from physical media.

breve 10mo ago
Hard drives and optical discs are the reason they duplicated the data. The duplicated the data to reduce load times.
- habbekrats 10mo ago
  do they even sell disc of these game?...
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    They do, but it's irrelevant to performance nowadays since you're required to install all of the disc data to the SSD before you can play. The PS3/360 generation was the last time you could play games directly from a disc (and even then some games had an install process).
    - Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
      I believe even then it was already "most", at least for the PS3; that was the era where always-online devices became the norm, where game developers were more eager to release patches after release, etc.
tetris11 10mo ago
In terms of ownership, yes absolutely. In terms of read/write speeds to physical media, the switch to an SSD has been unsung gamechanger. That being said, cartridges were fast. The move away from cartridges was a wrong turn
- BizarroLand 10mo ago
  I hate it when you buy a physical game, insert the disk, and immediately have to download the game in order to play the game because the disk only contains a launcher and a key. Insanity of the worst kind.
  - crest 10mo ago
    Or the launch day patch is >80% the size of the game, but I don't want to go back to game design limited by optical media access speeds.
  - hbn 10mo ago
    Nintendo is pretty good for putting a solid 1.0 version of their games on the cartridges on release. But on the other hand, the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long as they keep the servers online so you could download a digital purchase. I've kinda given up on physical games at this point. I held on for a long time, but the experience is just so bad now. They use the cheapest, flimsiest, most fragile plastic in the cases. You don't get a nice instruction manual anymore. And honestly, keeping a micro SD card in your system that can hold a handful of games is more convenient than having to haul around a bunch of cartridges that can be lost. I take solace in knowing that if I do still have a working Switch in 20 years and lose access to games I bought a long time ago, hopefully the hackers/pirates will have a method for me to play them again.
    - wtallis 10mo ago
      > the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long You've been paying attention to the wrong sources for information about NAND flash. A new Switch cartridge will have many years of reliable data retention, even just sitting on a shelf. Data retention only starts to become a concern for SSDs that have used up most of their write endurance; a Switch cartridge is mostly treated as ROM and only written to once.
jayd16 10mo ago
The (de)-optimization exists, essentially, because of physical media.

maccard 10mo ago

This isn't unique to games, and it's not just "today". Go back a decade [0] find people making similar observations about one of the largest tech companies on the planet. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066338

lynnharry 10mo ago
> FB App is 114MB in size, but loading this page in Chrome will use a good 450MB, idk how they managed that. This reminds me of the old days when I check who's using my PC memory every now and then.
Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
And that's consumer apps, having only glimpsed in the world of back-end / cloud shenanigans, there's heaps of data being generated and stored in datacenters. Useful data? Dunno, how useful are all access logs ever? But it's stored because it's possible, easy, and cheap. Unlike older games, where developers would hide unused blocks of empty data for some last-minute emergency cramming if they needed it.

high_na_euv 10mo ago

It was needed. Just the trade off wasnt worth it.

Zambyte 10mo ago
It was wanted and intentionally selected, but it wasn't needed.
Tepix 10mo ago
I'd argue it was incompetence.
red-iron-pine 10mo ago
it wasn't needed -- need means "must have" they're a fantastically popular franchise with a ton of money... and did it without the optimizations. if they never did these optimizations they'd still have a hugely popular, industry leading game minor tweaks to weapon damage will do more to harm their bottom line compared to any backend optimization