GamesFirst went through the trouble of investigating whether or not current-gen DVD was a good choice for Microsoft. There has been a lot of debate last few months about whether or not HD-DVD or BluRay would have been a better choice for games storage, even though the drives would have been much more expensive. Extrapolating game growth over the last few years shows no need to panic though.

First some general misconceptions are cleared up. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is often cited as a huge game on the current-gen Xbox, but turns out to be only 900MB in size. Next point of proof is a comparison between Azurik and Far Cry, games released respectively at the beginning and end of Xbox lifetime. It turns out that the stellar difference in graphics quality only required 500MB extra storage for the latter title. More titles show similar figures:

[…] as programmers optimize code, it’s not uncommon for programs to shrink. The original MechAssualt was 3.42 gigabytes, but MechAssualt 2 was only 2.29, a nearly 33% reduction in size. Yet MechAssualt II is considered a better looking game. Grand Theft Auto III is a paltry 733 megabytes, compared to Grand Theft Auto Vice City’s still paltry 1.2 gigs. Silent Hill 2 clocked in at 4.88 gigs. It’s sequel, Silent Hill 4, is only 3.16 gigabytes.

So is there need to fear? File sizes are known for the following four Xbox 360 launch titles:

• Condemned: 3.9 GB
• Madden 06 NFL: 3.3 GB
• Dead or Alive 4: 5 GB
• NBA 06: 4.5 GB

This averages to 4.18 GB or 49% of the DVD9 capacity. Then compare this to file growth on the Xbox through the years:

• Average for 2001: 1.81 gigs (21% of disc)
• Average for 2002: 2.17 gigs (25% of disc)
• Average for 2003: 2.47 gigs (29% of disc)
• Average for 2005: 3.20 gigs (37% of disc)

Over the 4 years of Xbox lifetime, games growed 56% on average. If we extrapolate this to the figures on the launch titles, we can expect the average Xbox 360 title in 4 or 5 years to be around 6.39 gigs, and to occupy about 75% of the disc’s capacity. At that time 3% of the games would run out of space on DVD-9.

However, there are more things involved here. Microsoft is actively pushing procedural synthesis technology which allows graphics to be generated rather than stored. This technique is what makes the forests in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion look so blindingly good. It also allowed someone to write a 3D game in 96KB of space with great looking graphics. 96KB is one and a half times the memory in my old Commodore 64 from 1984, just to emphasize the point.

All in all, it seems we do not have much to worry about considering file sizes, and Microsoft’s J Allard seems to have a point when he says developers requiring multiple discs are just sloppy coders.