So you know how there's all this talk about next-generation this and next-generation that and how everything is going digital? Well, unless your ISP is real friendly (highly unlikely) or decides to give you a free upgrade (about as common as a prostitute giving out a freebie) or they upgrade your monthly data cap (which is as likely as Republicans supporting Obamacare) then you're going to have a real hard time adopting an all digital future for next generation games.
Worlds Factory caught wind of a quote from Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss, Fergal Gara, in an interview with Eurogamer where he rolled out some (un)savory details on the whole digital download bit, and if you were planning on getting a digital copy of Killzone Shadow Fall you better hope your ISP won't drill you through your wallet's butthole for it.
According to Gara...
There are big innovations in the PS4 to make it more attractive and more easy gamer wise to want to download. The Play as you Download functionality, for example, means you don’t need the whole file before you go. This is a little bit counterbalanced by the fact the files themselves are getting bloody big. Killzone: Shadow Fall is an uber file – I think it’s cracking on for 50GB. It looks it, too, when you see it.
Well hot smoking burnt tamales. That's a file size big enough to make pirates think twice and they have a hard enough time thinking once.
All that pretty you see in the main image above and in the promotional videos showcased during the trade shows for Killzone Shadow Fall come at a price that's paid in gigabytes... 50 gigabytes, to be exact.
However, Gara and the rest of the chaps and chapettes at SCE realize that most people aren't paying money out of every financial orifice they have for the fastest internet around, so for people not keen on spending a week looking at a progress bar slowly crawl across the screen like a snail trying to run the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa, they have the new “Play as you Download” feature.
Gara states that...
We’ve done a lot of work on pre-delivering files. It’s not perfect. It’s not seamless. The file version of the game versus the disc version of the game maybe needs to go through additional QA and additional testing. Some of the problems that have occurred have occurred on older machines, which of course when you go into the next-generation you at least get to reset and start again and everything’s the same age and new. That helps.
I still have my reservations about the “Play as you Download” feature – I understand it only gets the essential files so you can start playing, but if it's instantaneous then I imagine that everything will be low-res so it can just get the bare essentials and put players in the game, otherwise the download to do the “Play as you Download” would eat up all the bandwidth for the standard download.
Then again, I'm not privy to the specifics on the way the feature works exactly or how it runs a balancing act so you can play and download at the same time and in a timely matter. Regardless, it still sounds like you need a pretty hefty internet connection to make it work.
Most gamers, however, have seen the news and realized that 50GB is just not worth the bandwidth hassle (nor the risk of exceeding their cap lest they risk overage charges) and have opted to stick with the disc-based rendition instead. I certainly don't blame them.
Killzone: Shadow Fall is set to release as a launch title for the PlayStation 4 in mid-November.
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