[jsheard]

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

[code_for_monkey]

I think certain games dont even bother to optimize the install size so that you cant fit other games on the hard drive, I think COD games are regularly hundreds of gigs

[KeplerBoy]

Having a humongous game might be a competitive advantage in the era of live-service games.

Users might be more hesitant to switch to another game if it means uninstalling yours and reinstalling is a big pain in the backside due to long download times.

[mitthrowaway2]

More likely once they uninstall it, they never reinstall it because they'd have to clear out so much other stuff to fit it back in.

[KeplerBoy]

I guess it's a lock-in effect of sorts.

[snet0]

I've often seen people mention that one reason for games like Call of Duty being so enormous is optimising for performance over storage. You'd rather decompress textures/audio files at install-time rather than during run-time, because you download/install so infrequently.

[justsomehnguy]

It's amusing we had a 2x-10x compression and negligible perfomance hit on 486 with DBLSPACE yet in 2020+...

[jsheard]

> I think COD games are regularly hundreds of gigs

I looked up the size of the latest one, and Sony's investment in RAD Kraken seems to be paying dividends:

Xbox: 214 GB

PC: 162 GB

PS5: 96 GB

[code_for_monkey]

that xbox install size is insane

[Ekaros]

Also the cost is often offloaded to the "greedy" Valve... So there is less pressure to optimize their own CDN use.

[jsheard]

Yeah, I don't think any of the stores charge developers in proportion to how much bandwidth they use. If that changed then the priorities could shift pretty quickly.

Publishers do have to care somewhat on the Switch since Nintendo does charge them more for higher capacity physical carts, but a lot of the time they just sidestep that by only putting part (or none) of the game on the cart and requiring the player to download the rest.

[PunchyHamster]

it's not really all that big of a cost, serving few hundred GBs costs pennies, despise what prices of S3 storage and bandwidth might led some people to believe.

[LtWorf]

It might but they have no way of measuring it so they won't take it into account.

[bombcar]

Given how many Steam games are bought but never even installed, it would seem not terribly worth optimizing for.

On phone, I bet you see some more effort.

[georgeecollins]

Both things are sort of true. Its not sales where size can hurt you but retention, which is why it tended to matter more on phones. When you need space on your device the apps are listed from largest to smallest.

On both phones and PCs storage has just grown so its less of an issue. The one thing I have noticed is that Apple does its price windowing around memory so you pay an absurd amount for an extra 128 gb. The ultra competitive Chinese phone market crams high end phones with a ton of memory and battery. Si some popular Chinese phone games are huge compared to ones made for the iPhone.