By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - When will we see a 1TB game?

 

When will we see the first Terabyte game?

10 years in the future. 144 46.91%
 
20 years in the future. 95 30.94%
 
30 years in the future. 18 5.86%
 
40 years in the future. 13 4.23%
 
50 years in the future. 11 3.58%
 
60 years in the future. 1 0.33%
 
70 years in the future. 1 0.33%
 
80 years in the future. 1 0.33%
 
90 years in the future. 3 0.98%
 
More than 100 years in the future. 20 6.51%
 
Total:307

It depends on how quickly 4k/8k becomes adopted in the gaming industry.

I expect it to be the standard resolution TV within 10-12 years, so gaming industry will adopt it around 3-5 years after that.



Current Game Machines: 3DS, Wii U, PC.

Currently Playing: X-Com(PC), Smash Bros(WiiU), Banner Saga(PC), Guild Wars 2(PC), Project X Zone(3DS), Luigis Mansion 2(3DS), DayZ(PC)

Around the Network

its a common misconception that 4k/8k=much bigger games. However that's just not the case.

In games, 3 things take up space. Textures, videos and audio. Those are the most space hungry assets of any game. The audio side of this isn't really an issue, you can only have so much audio in a game, so that will never take up more than 3-5Gb (and that's really pushing it). The video part is a major culprit. Even if using videos made from the in game engine and stored as a video file (trick used to allow background level loading) or using full on CG videos, you are basically still storing a video file on there. 1hr worth of full HD video is over 15GB big.

But as game tech and hardware improves, in game IQ is at a level where CG videos aren't necessary anymore. So they won't have to store chunky video files in their games. So that too is not really an issue.

Which brings us to textures. Textures are measured in texels. 500x500kb, 1000x1000kb, 2000x2000kb, 4000x4000kb...etc. The higher the number, the higher the texture resolution used. The higher the texture rez, the more system memory and bandwidth you need to store and move them around respectively.

1080p/4k/8k all have fixed memory allotments. Basically they have absolutely nothing to do with what is actually on the disc. If you take super Mario bros from the 80s, as is, then output it at 4k, it will draw the exact same amount of frame memory (in relation to resolution) that crysis 3 will require. And that draw is all on the system RAM side of things. Not on storage space. Take the textures from that game however, and upscale them to 8000x8000kb texels, and it will cripple a PS4 and will require over 30GB of storage space.

The funny thing is, realistically speaking, games don't even need anything more than a 2kx2k texel rez, anything higher than that is simply overkill. OK, maybe 4kx4k is justifiable, but anything more is just unnecessary and a waste of resources. Reason being that when u get that much higher, it becomes impossible to see the difference in added texture rez.

Hope that clears it up.



Xenoblade Chronicles X with 4K textures.



I highly doubt it will be more than 10 years.



We will not have to wait for a decade, just wait for Johnattan Blow's next game.

I'm pretty sure the guy doesn't know what compression means.



Around the Network

50 years The order size is only 30gb



PS4 - over 100 millions let's say 120m
Xbox One - 70m
Wii U - 25m

Vita - 15m if it will not get Final Fantasy Kingdoms Heart and Monster Hunter 20m otherwise
3DS - 80m

My guess is within 10 years a modded Elder Scrolls VI for example could push resolution and textures insanely high.

On an actual released vanilla game think were 15-20 years off, but hard to say given compression techniques and emerging technologies.

I just think of what impressed me in 1995 in regards to PC specs (I think our hard drive was ~100 megabytes back then on our first home PC). I know the trends have slowed down, but I still think we tend to underestimate large spans of time (20+ years) in regards to modern technology.



Shadow1980 said:

SMB: 40kB
SMB3: 384kB
Super Metroid: 3MB
Super Mario 64: 8MB
Perfect Dark: 32MB
Tomb Raider: 207MB (PSN file size)
Crash Bandicoot: 460MB (PSN file size)
1. FFVII: 1.29GB (PSN file size; original may have been over 1.4GB as it took up 3 discs)
Halo CE: 2.35GB (Xbox Marketplace file size) or 3.47GB (NTSC disc file size, original Xbox version)
Kingdom Hearts: 2.83GB
GTA San Andreas: 4.2GB (PSN file size)
Halo 3: 5.7GB (Xbox Marketplace and game install sizes)
2. FFXIII-2: 14.4GB (PS3) or 7.6GB (360)
Max Payne 3: ~15GB
3. MGS4: ~30GB
4. FFXIII: 37.6GB (PS3) or 18.3GB (360)

  1. Nope, on games that take up multiple discs, a lot of the data on the disc is duplicated. So the real actual game size is a lot smaller than the combined capacity of all the discs it ships on. 
  2. Inthis case, in addition to using higher quality video files (which take up more space) a lot of the data on ps3 games were duplicated and layered on different parts of the disc. This was done to improve loadimg times. 
  3. Tons and tons of videos. If you strip out all the video files from this game, the actual game is probably less than 5GB. 
  4. Same with number 2 above.
Contrary to what people think or how it may seem, we just will never have games much bigger than 100GB ever. The thought of even filling 100GB will probably give some devs nightmares.


I would say about 20 years from now.



Thanks jlmurph!

Darwinianevolution said:

With most modern gen games using around 30-50 gb of space without counting patchs or expansions, I started thinking about a decade ago. When my father bought our first computer, it had a 10 gb hard drive, and we thought we would never fill that beast. Now I can get that capacity in SD cards smaller than a nail. It's crazy how technology evolves. With all this said, when do you think games will start to reach the terabyte? A decade seems too much, maybe two?


Hopefully not for a long time. There is thing thing called compression, it keeps getting better and better, there is no reason for these companies, especially with the use of SSD's to not be using decompression on the fly. Or find better sampling for audio (eats huge amounts of space).



Gotta figure out how to set these up lol.