irstupid said:
Well yes, obviously with advancing technololgy you can do things you couldn't before. Those same 1-3gb PS2 games could be done way smaller today.
The point though is more that through time, Nintendo has been consitently much smaller, or at least stayed small. We just had Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey release and both are like 3-5 gb in size. I'm not in the mood to look up older game sizes, such as those on the gamecube. But regardless, Gamecube as more powerful than teh ps2 and had better looking games. Their discs were capped at 1.5 gb. PS2 wasn't outrageous, as you said average was 1-3 gbs. So lets say for argument sake that the ps2 and gamecube looked identical in visuals and also same size. Lets look at next gen then.
PS3 starts getting like 20 gb games or more. Wii still sits around 1-5 gbs. The Wii U the same. (a few exceptions) Look at PS4 games. you are now in the 50-100 gb range for a game. The Switch still around 5 gbs per game.
You bring up advancign technology and effeciency as to why we can't compare Switch size to PS2 size. But I use that same argument to say that PS4/One are not taking advantage of the advanced tech and efficiency. THey are looking lazy.
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And yet for all Nintendo's apparent compression mastery, there's a huge degree of variance in their file sizes. Zelda is 6+ times larger than ARMS. XCX is a further twice~ the size of Zelda, and that with heavy compression. NSMB WiiU is 2GB~, yet Tropical Freeze is 11GB~.
The closer to the technical and design philosophies of the average PS4/X1 title Nintendo go, the closer they get to the file size range we expect from games of that technical quality. XCX for instance isn't large because Monolith are incompetent and lazy, in-fact they're one of Nintendo's most technically capable developers. XCX is large because that's what its design and technical choices dictate. Now imagine it was making use of assets comparable to something like Horizon, was storing hours of motion captured animation data, etc. I honestly doubt it'd fit on a double sided blu-ray.
There are many lazy developers out there, and Nintendo do push their compression harder than average (they have more reasons than most to accept the negatives associated with it), but the way people constantly frame this discussion is absurd. It was silly with the WiiU, and it's even sillier now that we're comparing disks to cartridges. These threads make me feel the same way as the ones where Sony fans claim PS4 exclusives are graphically superior to anything on PC. It's silly, and frequently demonstrates a severe lack of understanding about the details of the topic.
Developers make decisions that best suit the environment they're working in. If a platform can allow for better loading times, less burden on the CPU, and less time spent on storage optimisation, they'll take advantage of that. There are some developers that take the piss, but most PS4 and X1 titles go for a middle ground between compression and the advantages of its absence. While some might prefer otherwise, it's not lazy.
Last edited by Zekkyou - on 02 November 2017