Xbox One X Downloads Are Insanely Massive

One unavoidable trend from this most recent generation of gaming has been extremely large file sizes. As you might have guessed, that trend is only going to grow now that games are being upgraded to 4K to look their best on consoles like the Xbox One X. According to a recent report, though, we're looking at about double what has been considered the norm for AAA games.

Remember when all you needed to play a bunch of games was a hard drive measuring about 60GB? Yeah, those were the days. If you're gaming on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4, you likely have at least a terabyte and, honestly, you probably don't want to have any less than 2TB if you don't want to keep deleting games to make room for new ones. And don't even get me started on the Nintendo Switch, as games with even a smaller file size by modern standards are too big for the console's on-board capacity.

But, according to a recent report over on Eurogamer, things are only going to get worse now that consoles like the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X are becoming the new norm. All of that 4K goodness is going to come at a cost, and part of that cost is your quickly dwindling hard drive space.

According to the report, the upgraded version of Gears of War 4 takes up a whopping 103GB. And then there's Halo 5, which clocks in at just over 98GB without a 4K update. If you plan to play in 4K, that'll knock the file size up an additional 15GB. They also tested Forza 7, which is nearly 96GB in size, and Quantum Break comes in at just shy of 84GB in size. As an added bonus for the latter, that doesn't include the game's optional TV show that dovetails with the game. If you want that, you'll need to download another 75.6GB.

In recent years, we've found the AAA norm to be around 50GB. In other words, these upgraded games for the newest hardware are about double that size. So if you plan on downloading your games, you can only fit about 10 on a terabyte of hard drive space.

What we don't know yet is how this all looks in the physical space. But you've likely noticed that even physical games these days require downloads that eat up a healthy chunk of space. If there's ever been a reason for console developers to create reliable streaming alternatives, this is likely it. Depending on the type of internet you have, 100GB can take a really, really long time to download.

Then again, once you see those games running on your new 4K hardware, looking more breathtaking than ever, maybe it'll all be worth it.