The size of the game file

[Lanstar]

This is what I heard about the games that I think merits a thread of its own: The download size of the Sun and Moon games is around 3.2 Gigabytes. Even more, you could end up not having enough space if you download both it and the Demo file on the same 4 GB SD card that comes standard in a 3DS.

To compare, the X and Y games took 1.8 GB of space. That means Sun and Moon takes 1.4 GB more space than the last generation. It strikes me curious what made this Gen have a larger file size... I'm betting it's the new overworld, Pokemon models and battle animations. Either way, it sounds interesting to speculate about.

 

[PurplePopplio]

Wow! Everyone has gotten so fat! Must be the luxury lifestyle!

Sun and Moon seem way more compact with features than XY. They also have a better postgame so far than XY which only had the Maison and the Looker Episode. But this is just subjective. So feel free to disagree.

 

[Esserise]

Sun and Moon seem way more compact with features than XY. They also have a better postgame so far than XY which only had the Maison and the Looker Episode. But this is just subjective. So feel free to disagree.

I'm not going to disagree per se, but I am going to question how you know what the post-game of SM is like.

 

[Cute Charm]

Bigger maps, more pokemon (possibly pushing 800), battle models for all trainers, trainers in battle, special over world pokemon models for pokeride, tons of wifi compatibility (more than just pss and global link)....the list goes on.

 

[PinkIceFox]

Big is good. Means more stuff is in there or more effort was put into the stuff in there. I'm excited... also glad I'm getting the Physcial copy. Excited for trainer models in battle... if all kinds of trainers get battle models it might finally mean the days of over world character sprites looking different from battle sprites is gone!

This game can't come fast enough I was nowhere near this excited for X and Y. (Well, I was ecstatic over Fennekin. Moreso excited over Litten though. CATCATCATCATCAT.)

 

[Tente]

My mind was immediately excited about the possibility of something big under wraps (some second major area to visit...?) or a real plot, but maybe it's true all these trainer models are hogging up a lot of space. Maybe these Z moves too.

1.4 GB is a lot, though. SM are gonna be near twice as big as XY, data wise, which is crazy. I feel like there has to be SOMETHING, or maybe just a very long story.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Times like this I'm glad I prefer physical copies over data downloads. No way my 3DS could handle that, not with other things on it like Yugioh WDC and the soon-to-be-acquired SM demo. But a larger data size means far more content. If the data size is nearly double the size of XY, then that means we're in for some good stuff. Hopefully this means SM is jam-packed with lots of content and other goodies. I'm looking forward to these games quite a bit. I wish November 18th would get here faster, as I need something new to play.

 

[Falseface]

Nice, I'm looking forward to seeing how much content there is in Moon.

 

[godiego]

I feel like there has to be SOMETHING

it really probably is largely from the overworld/graphics changes.

 

[jitzul]

I really really hope this means there is a metric ass load of content. I also hope this means that the amount of content in sun and moon is equal to a third game seeing as how the past 2 generations somewhat hint to game freak dropping 3rd version games. I just don't want another x and y situation where (at least to me) it felt like there was a lot of lose threads that will never be picked up again.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I really hope that the large size means there is a lot of content to the games. It could be the new Pokemon models and over world graphics, but it could be something a bit more than that. The fact that they even said that it might be difficult to have both the demo and the downloaded game together might be tricky due to the space is a big sign. Either way, I just hope it means that they put a lot of effort into the games. I always buy physical copies whenever I can, so I won't have that issue.

 

[PurplePopplio]

I hope the big size mean a Battle Frontier that's very new and improved.

 

[Lufenium]

I think a lot of this will be the new graphics engine & models. It's a biiig step up from Gen VI.

 

[Arceus the Dragon]

BF is not going to happen. Also I doubt SM would have a lot of content even with the size of the game file. I learn that hope gets me no where so hoping for a large post game and large contents in SM is pointless in my opinion.

 

[Silktree]

Features like the Battle Frontier don't even take up a lot of space, so you really can't use the file size to determine anything about them.

Just for the record, Black and White were around twice the file size of Platinum (roughly 190MB compared to 95MB). It wasn't due to more post-game content.

 

[Kallyle]

Features like the Battle Frontier don't even take up a lot of space, so you really can't use the file size to determine anything about them.

Just for the record, Black and White were around twice the file size of Platinum (roughly 190MB compared to 95MB). It wasn't due to more post-game content.

You made a good point there. The size of the game does not necessarily mean more content or features. It jsut means that these games hold more data than the last ones.

One thing that people have to remember is that Game Freak keeps certain Key Items and other content like contest stats from the previous games that aren't used in the current ones. Those things take up data, and so do the Pokémon, their moves, etc. Granted, this seems to be a pretty big jump in terms of data size for just graphical changes alone. This means that the large data size could most likely be attributed to:

• the Z-Moves and their animations
• these games having quite a bit of dummied-out content, or
• Game Freak put a lot of care and fun into making the quality-and-quantity packed the features that we've seen so far, meaning that these games have some form of longevity to them.

 

[godiego]

Those things take up data, and so do the Pokémon, their moves, etc. Granted, this seems to be a pretty big jump in terms of data size for just graphical changes alone.

XY and ORAS are around three times larger than BW2. given that SM seem to be a lot less tileset oriented (esp on the overworld), it really can be because of graphics. audio also takes up a hunk of space.

 

[Mitchman]

It can't just be the overworld change and putting trainers into the battle scenes.Nor is it just the fact that they placed new Pokemon in the games. As a reminder for discussion about what takes up how much data in game, to get a good sense of size and factor. For the sake of ease, lets say 1GB=1000MB, otherwise it might be a bit hard for others to grasp things if I do a 100% conversion.
Pokemon Models
XY-1016MB
ORAS-1046MB
Music
XY-116MB
ORAS-320MB
With that data known, we can come up with 3 conclusions,more or less:
1. Pokemon models take up a relatively big amount of space, however their size going forward is not a big factor in space size. We can conclude by ORAS' size increase and the base MB of XY as the ground zero if you will, that new models take up roughly 1.2-1.5MB in storage space. Using an example of a new total including Ultra Beasts,Alola Forms and alternate forms, of say 120 new Pokemon Models, the storage space needed for new Pokemon comes out roughly to 144-180MB. That would mean Pokemon would take up 1200MB, or 1.2GB. Of course the total could be around 150 or even more if they surprise us, and come out to around 1.5GB.
2. Music takes up a realitvely small amount of space, and judging the feature list, region size, and story elements, ORAS should be the better judge of how much music will take up space in the games, and I would think its around 250MB. See, ORAS had a large track list, but not double, yet the file size tripled. I think this is cause some tracks were uncompressed, as the sound quality did jump up when playing it compared to ORAS, especially with the newer tracks and extreme remixes. Basically, I can only assume that if the tracks are slightly less compressed, but with a low track count as evident by the SM Super Music Collection, it would be some middle ground between XY's miniscule file size and ORAS' jump in size ands quality. 171 tracks for an entirely new generation and region is quite small.
3. XY and ORAS have a tiny amount of storage space for the rest of the game. XY has around 700MB and ORAS around 500 MB for the entirety of the games, which includes:
Text Files
Overworld Models
GUI
Models and Backgrounds for battles,super training, Amie, etc
Cutscene Maps and Models
If we consider that ORAS was even more feature rich then ORAS, while being in a smaller package and a bigger region, I definitely think Gamefreak is actually getting BETTER at compression sizes then not. I see a lot of people mentioning that because of the file size, this must be another case of Gamefreak's technical ineptitude at hand, and that the game is so big because they don't know how to handle "true 3D". But its likely not, as ORAS having a smaller space to work with while being bigger compared to XY suggests the opposite. Both total at 1.8GBs of space.

So what does this mean for SM? I definitely think its overall size is indeed a sign that there is more then there seems to be. If we consider that Pokemon and Music combined could take up no more then 1.5-1.7GB of space, the is no way everything else takes up that much space. This is were it goes into speculation more then before, so sorry if this doesn't come out entirely true in the end. Consider the following-
SM has a larger overworld then before, yes, but its complex geometry is also offseted by the fact that the maps are smaller, and more condensed. In the end, it might be a larger region to explore, but the ingame surface area to explore won't be more then 30% of Kalos' size more or less, including all those areas that you cannot traverse on.
There are a whole lot less things that require double amount of work, and create bloat. For example, all cutscenes are in engine, so things like XY and ORAS' cutscenes, with more to scale models and new maps are gone. Second, I doubt the battle models for trainers are completely new, and just animated OW models. I have to go back and look, but they seem to be the same size and the same deadpan stare when they aren't losing.
I think with everything taken under consideration, minigames, story, region, music, Pokemon total, and Gamefreak somehow being technically adept(FINALLY), the games current content and size in no way allows the size of the game to be that high, unless they are hiding something huge. I have run a number of calcuations and gone over what could take up what amount of storage, and I always come out to roughly 2.3GB-2.5GB of storage MAX for SM.

 

[Boss1708]

I am no expert, but I think the new gridless overworld would be a big factor in the big filesize. It is something that probably took them a lot of space and development work. Also, maybe the underwater is back. This could easily mean a big extra chunk of the region is hidden. And surely developing that in 3D can take a lot of extra space as well.


So the reason for the huge game file size could be a bigger region than we thought, rather than a bigger amount of content.

Also, as Silktree said, things like the Battle Frontier don´t take up much space anyway, so "extra content" is not the reason for the bigger file size.

 

[Mitchman]

I went into that, the bigger region might be the reason, but its definitely not going to account for upwards of 1GB of storage memory. Graphical fidelity is still on par with XY, and even if its pretty big, there are still a lot of repeat assets and development cheats to keep the size down. Because of how small a lot of new features can be, I am fairly certain there is more then meets the eye for the games.