However, with hundreds of downloadable titles released each year (and with Web interfaces that are extremely unfriendly to easily aggregating the file size data), we needed to narrow things down a bit.

Ideally, this would mean just averaging together the file size for every release on every platform for every year. Next, we had to determine how downloadable game file sizes have changed over the years. Obviously, how this data compares to your speed is very dependent on your location and service provider, but it should suffice to show the general trend of increasing broadband speeds across the country. We averaged together the quarterly averages Akamai reported within each year to get a single number representing general broadband speeds in the US for that year. Luckily, Akamai's 'State of the Internet' report has been measuring the average connection speed for a number of countries since the middle of 2007.

We could throw our own experience into this mix, but to get something more than anecdotal conjecture, we were going to need some hard data.įirst up, we had to determine how Internet speeds have changed over time. Others said their downloads are much faster now, mainly due to an improved Internet connection compared to the one they used to have. Some people felt that big games are much more annoying to download today than they were a few years ago.

Soliciting some gamers' experiences in this regard got a wide range of responses. Still, that whopper of a file size got us thinking: have game sizes been increasing faster or slower than broadband download speeds in recent years? That is to say, does a game take more or less time to download, on average, than it did in the recent past? The PS4 also offers the ability to start playing a downloading game before it is completely finished. Of course, you can still buy the game on a disc rather than clogging up your broadband with that massive download. Sony UK Managing Director Fergal Gara caused a bit of a to-do in the gaming world today when he revealed, via a Eurogamer interview, that the digital download of PS4 launch title Killzone: Shadow Fall was 'cracking on for 50GB.' That's a pretty hefty file size whether you're comparing it to the 500GB of hard drive space built in to every PS4 or to the broadband speeds in most US homes these days.

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