File sizes for Xbox One games like Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Prey revealed

Update: Middle-earth: Shadow of War is 3 times the size of the original game hence why it takes up so much space.

We recently reported on the file size for Destiny 2 and how it’s expected to be around 68 GB at launch. However, what about the other major games coming out in the coming weeks? A quick run through of the Xbox Store provided a lot of insight into these titles. While games like The Disney Afternoon Collection are less than 500 MB on the console, experiences like Middle-earth: Shadow of War approach Destiny 2 territory. The download sizes of some upcoming games are as follows:

Titles like Destiny 2 and Middle-earth: Shadow of War are expected to support 4K resolution on Project Scorpio so the addition of those assets may explain their sizes. However, that still doesn’t fully explain the recent trend of console game sizes being astronomical. For example, Halo 5: Guardians currently stands at almost 100 GB on Xbox One. The game doesn’t support Project Scorpio and almost necessitates an external hard drive.

Developers are using uncompressed audio and high-resolution textures and these games look phenomenal. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the consumer. When you purchase a console nowadays, you either have to opt for the expensive model with the most storage or purchase a separate external hard drive. Sometimes you have to do both.

It’s understandable that developers want their games to be the best-looking and most advanced out there, but maybe researching new compression techniques will be beneficial going forward. Xbox One Blu-ray discs hold 50 GB and games like Halo 5 require consumers to practically re-download the entire title even after getting a physical copy. Hopefully file sizes will be a priority for the gaming industry going forward because internet speeds in the majority of the world don’t support downloading 100 GB files in a timely fashion.