New Games, Old Problems
The original XBOX revolutionised the gaming industry, it was the
first console to have an in-built Hard Disk Drive (HDD), removing the need for
removable storage devices which were, for anyone with a Play Station, the bane
of their existence. No longer were individuals required to constantly swap and
change their removable storage devices to find out which one they had their
saved game on, only for it to fall out and the system crash. The industry is
now facing another challenge, the original XBOX had an 8-10GB HDD, which was
enough space for most people to play their games of choice, and rarely,
required additional space. The Modern XBOX One X and Play Station 4 have up to
100 times that, a staggering 500GB as standard, with higher models having a
double that, a 1TB HDD.
However, the modern systems
require all games to be installed on the HDD, which would normally be fine, but
the size of the games has grown, and it is not proportional to the size of the
HDD. Almost every console user will have at least one of the following games,
the most recent release from the Call of Duty (COD), FIFA or NBA, a significant
amount will have two of these. These games are huge, and must be installed on
the HDD permanently if they wish to be played. COD games are usually about
100GB, FIFA sits at 97GB and NBA the smaller of the 3 listed is 70GB. I
mentioned Skyrim: Elder Scrolls in a previous blog, which is roughly 85GB.
If you purchased the higher-end
released PS4, you can probably hold about 10 or so of your favourite games
without additional space being required, which is great. But, modern consoles
are intended to be all-in-one home-entertainment systems, with multiple users
and a platform for multimedia, with people encouraged to download music, movies
and TV shows. The PlayStation nor XBOX franchise can maintain its use as an
entertainment system as well as a gaming console with their current size of
HDD, a 500GB fits 4 games, and a few movies/TV shows. Expanding from statistics
released by Sony, they have sold over 50 million consoles, and about 380
million games, meaning the average person would have about 7.4 games per
console (left), take notice of the names of each. The average game is about 40 GB, however AAA titles, which are the
better and more commonly sold games, average about 70-80 GB, some franchises being
100GB, and multiple version out at the same time. This means that it is
unlikely that an individual will be able to fit all of their favourite games,
music and movies onto the device that was marketed for that exact reason.
Console developers have not kept up with their game developers to
allow consumers to get the best experience from their products. This tactic is
unlikely on purpose to push their own removable devices, but rather either cost,
or laziness, with cost more likely factor as HDD can be quite expensive and
significant in size. The PS2 may have been on purpose, as only Sony products
fit into device, however now USB ports are standard on all consoles, and so any
removable device from Seagate to SanDisk are compatible to the consoles.
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