really large games that are upwards of 70GB (for example genshin impact) run on mobile for only a fraction of that. how is that possible? i know that they’re different systems but I don’t know enough about storage and logistics of computers to fully understand this. (i guess this could segway into an entirely separate question of how co-op works…)
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They don’t use the same assets. For PC the models and textures are more detailed and thus require more storage.
They’re just not trying to store the same thing. The mobile version uses lower quality assets by design because they still look more or less acceptable on smaller screens (and mobile audiences aren’t as demanding). Most of a game’s storage requirements are tied up in textures and such, as opposed to compiled code which is just text.
Two reasons:
First of all, as others have said, PC games have better quality assets that simply take up more space. PC versions are expected to have higher quality graphics and to be displayed on larger screens where lower quality textures are much more apparent than a small phone screen. These textures take a lot of space in your storage, and worse – many games will download every texture rather than just the ones you plan on using, which is an issue if you want to use 1080p textures but still have to download the 4k ones.
Secondly, there’s very little pressure on developers to optimize games for storage on PC. Storage on PC is cheap – you can buy a massive hard drive for less than $15 per terabyte, and it’s somewhat modular – if you run out of space, it’s generally possible to add more without completely replacing your PC. Storage speed has not typically been a limiting factor for anything but load times as developers have assumed the worst case for their customer’s storage mediums (although this has started to change in recent games). This is not true of phones, where expandable storage is limited to SD cards, which typically introduce noticeable performance hits during gameplay compared to onboard memory, and said onboard memory is as simple – and expensive – to upgrade as buying a new phone So phone developers have an actual incentive to reduce the size of their games – because otherwise customers won’t buy them – while PC developers have typically treated storage like it’s effectively infinite.
I expect this second factor to change in the next few years. PC games like Dead Space Remake have started to actually utilize the faster speeds of more recent SSDs to load on demand and actually may not run properly on older hard drives, and that means that customers require more expensive storage to run those games properly. These newer SSDs will typically have a much smaller capacity, and a 100 gig game taking 5-10% of your $200 drive instead of less than 2% of your $100 drive is a much harder sell for consumers.
On a computer: I want it to look pretty and have stunning effects.
On mobile: It works, yes!
When playing on the different platforms, we expect certain levels of refinement. On PC, those stunning textures and VFX take up a lot of memory. We don’t expect any of that on mobile.
The main thing that increases storage size is the 3d models and textures, which is why some games offer 4k textures as a separate download. Mobile games have lower poly models and textures, and sometimes sounds so the file size is lower.
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