Way back in February, Shuhei Yoshida talked about how PlayStation 4 games will have very large file sizes when you go to download them from the PlayStation Store, with some reaching up to 50GB (good thing the PS4 HDD has 500GB).
Now that we’re under two months away (!) from the PS4 launch, Fergal Gara, VP & Managing Director at SCE UK and Ireland, caught up with Eurogamer, where he talked about how the PS4 will handle big game downloads, revealing how Killzone: Shadow Fall will take up close to 50GB at the same time:
First of all, it is definitely going to grow as a means of consumption. And there are big innovations in the PS4 to make it more attractive and more easy gamer wise to want to download. The Play as you Download functionality, for example, means you don’t need the whole file before you go. This is a little bit counterbalanced by the fact the files themselves are getting bloody big. Killzone: Shadow Fall is an uber file – I think it’s cracking on for 50GB. It looks it, too, when you see it.
It is still a relatively tedious process. We’ve done a lot of work on pre-delivering files. It’s not perfect. It’s not seamless. The file version of the game versus the disc version of the game maybe needs to go through additional QA and additional testing. Some of the problems that have occurred have occurred on older machines, which of course when you go into the next-generation you at least get to reset and start again and everything’s the same age and new. That helps.
But it’s a major area of focus. It’s a major area of investment. The network will perform better on multiple levels, because it becomes not just a sales or gaming delivery but increasingly it becomes a social network. So it’s got to be a compelling experience on multiple levels. It’s going to be for no lack of investment, for no lack of effort and no lack of intention that things might fall a bit short. But we’re definitely moving in the right direction, and I’m confident when step on and understand its importance.
Even with Play as you Download, do you plan on buying physical versions of games that are close to 50GB, instead of downloading them? Let us know in the comments below.
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