Mario Kart 8 Deluxe File Size Revealed

[Nuvendil]

LipeJJ said:

Zekkyou said:

It usually comes down to one (or a combination) of these:

- Nintendo's game tend to be smaller in scale, as far as asset quantity goes. Something like Mario Kart requires far less modelling, texturing, and audio work than something like Forza. When they do make more asset demanding games, like BotW or XCX, their files quickly grow (XCX is probably their largest: 23~ GB by default, and 33GB with the patches).
- Their games tend to be built around lower-spec hardware, so even when they need a lot of assets those assets are usually smaller.
- The size of their games matter more. Their consoles come with very limited amounts of in-built storage, and now on the Switch they have an active financial incentive to make their games smaller. PS4, X1, and PC developers don't have these worries. Some make games with crap tons of high quality assets, some sacrifice file size efficiency in flavor of other direct benefits (e.g. softer compression = better audio, quicker load times), and some just don't care enough to find a good balance.

That's not a good point. PS3, which is weaker than Switch, had linear games with very big file sizes like God of War Ascension. While a big open world more demanding game, like Breath of the Wild like you said, is only 13GB. 

There's only one simple explanation: they invest more time/effort compressing stuff like audio, because like you said their hardwares have less storage, so it's more important.

It's more about being thorough.  Not having more textures than the game needs to look good is one.  A lot of modern games will have multiple variants of, say, a road texture when really one would do, you would never notice.  Games will have assets that are replaced during development still left in, basically taking up space while providing nothing.  Some games have meshes that are much more complex than need be, providing no appreciable added  details.  And of course audio files are many times larger than need be (not higher quality, just bigger, no appreciable quality is added).  With racing games, being thorough about stuff like this lets you get real lean real fast.  Most modern devs on PS4 don't because mandatory installs are mandatory and therefore have no incentive to keep their unpacked file sizes small enough to play off the physical media.  Nintendo has never had mandatory installs and therefore wants smaller files to make it easier to fit on whatever physical media they use and play off of it smoothly.