Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX I’l tag @ogo79 so he can show you his description.

@Zuljaras I'm looking forward to Unfunded 5: Deeper over the Shoulder. That along with "Spider-Man 2: Psyche" (On Twitter 24h later, it's just stand-alone DLC).

(And yes, I did just use dated slang...)

@ThanosReXXX I don't get the emphasis on "data duplication" to justify just about enough storage space included to fit.......Fallout76. Alone. PC should give a pretty good clue as to what the sizes are without "data duplication", and the sizes are....about the same? Even if they can chop the language packs and lower resolution assets, it's the smaller data elements they're purging, while making the full res ones bigger than ever. I'm holding my breath to watch how the gen unfolds over time. They want an all digital world, but when they offer so little storage, I think there's going to be a ton of frustration, and the costs don't look set to catch up with them in time. I'm guessing when they put this stuff on the drawing board they were expecting a price crash on SSD by the time they launched. But the prices have generally been holding steady.

As for Mixer, yeah, that's kind of like saying "We're sorry, but Neiman Marcus will be closing our doors forever. We've gone ahead and forwarded your previous shopping preferences, and your credit accounts to Walmart for future business."

I suppose games should install a lot faster, at least, which might help with the downloading as well as doing it from disc Maybe wait until there's a few big games out, that aren't cross-gen, to see if they do actually get smaller?
Along with seeing how much the storage options are & then wait for sales....

Last month, I downloaded Super Mario Maker 2 and it took 4 hours. Yesterday, my friend downloaded the same game and it took less than 10 minutes. Why?

Do they generally have better Internet speeds? There could be plenty of other factors but that's usually the biggest....

@BruceCM Probably

Maybe internet speed, your position from Wi Fi source, your Micro SD card speed specs.

@Zuljaras Kinda reminded me of these ones:


Then again, they're all basically alike...

@BabyYoshi12 Ah, @ogo79... Yeah, that's different: he's a forum legend, so he's already earned his stripes, so we give him some leeway here and there.

@NEStalgia As I understood it, the data reduction was not about language packs or dropping lower res items, but especially on disc-based games, it is supposedly so that entire parts of levels/worlds/stages are on the disc multiple times, to facilitate faster loading, depending on where you are in a game, so the laser doesn't have to move back to the start or end position of the disc, to grab that bit of data that is then needed again, so we're potentially talking about several GB's in total here, per game.

And the same goes for conventional storage solutions: installed games on normal hard drives apparently also have these duplicate files in several locations, because obviously, we're still talking about spinning discs here. With the newer storage media in the upcoming consoles, that problem should be entirely gone, which would mean less storage space needed per game. I've no idea how that's going to work or if it's going to work with cross platform/cross-gen games, though, but I guess we'll find out eventually.

Concerning Mixer: I still have to read that article. I only browsed titles, because between NLife and PureXbox, there was just too much to catch up on in one evening. For now, I'm just kinda mystified as to why they'd stop collaborating with a highly popular and profitable service, that is SO very much a part of the gaming community, which Facebook totally isn't, and that makes it a far less suitable partner, even besides my personal dislike of Darth Zuckerberg.

@ThanosReXXX Ah... well, I wouldn’t know, I only joined last month. There was one other who did it, but I can’t remember who.... Well, if it feels weird, I’ll change it if you want!

@BabyYoshi12 Nah, man. It's a free world, so you're allowed to put anything you want there, as long as it is within the confines of the site rules. I'm just a person who always speaks his mind, so I simply had to give my two cents on it either way. I'll get used to it, eventually...

Okay! So, in the end, the process of redownloading all my games, DLC, and updates for my physical releases onto my new 952GB SD card took about 29 hours. And it got me thinking - Yes, the majority of my games being physical releases saves a LOT of space on my system. But the majority of them still needed me to go back and redownload updates - and in some cases even chunks of the game (Doom 2016, I'm glaring at you!). And it really makes me question my stance on the whole digital vs. physical debate. Because I feel like - at this point - it's already been decided for us. It's not like on older systems where the entire base game - minus the DLC - would be on a cartridge or a disc. If, in the future, someone buys a Switch and the servers are down - that Doom cartridge will be nearly useless. As will most games that have sizable updates.

I'm glad that they can patch and fix things, and I like additional content. But at the same time, I feel like the only reason to buy physical at this point is simply to save space on our system. Things have really changed.

@ThanosReXXX Those pictures are fantastic - God bless whomever did it.

@ThanosReXXX admit it. You just wanted to stealth mention pineapple and see if anyone noticed.

Add for duplicate sectors, yeah that was true for optical formats, but for digital formats it's a silly argument that makes no sense. For optical the radius from spindle to rim is fixed and thus that method allowed controlled tracking. For installed formats it makes no sense. Hdd installs don't have fixed head tracking or even standard platter/head counts it diameteters. And they track far faster than optical.

Honestly i think they're making that part up. Not needing low res assets is the big space saver, supposedly. But how much that matters seems sketchy. Bigger games, smaller drives, quadruple cost. Heck Jax is trying to pull be back to PC. He's half succeeding though i need to see the console numbers before making any real decisions.

@Heavyarms55 Yeah, they're pretty inventive. Seeing as you liked them, there's more where that come from:

Concerning re-downloading all your Switch games: I'm kinda sad/sorry that I was absent for a while, because had I read about you going to/wanting to do that, then I would have given you a FAR easier and faster solution, because you don't HAVE to download everything again: you can simply eject the SD card from your Switch, put it in a card reader, copy or move all the data on there to a PC, laptop or tablet, and then copy that back onto your new SD card. It would have saved you about 27 hours...

The reason why this is possible and so relatively simple to do, is because the Switch is basically a smart device/Android device, so it's kinda like connecting your smart phone to your PC and reading its directories.
(edit: or in this specific case, it's the reason why the card is readable on a PC, laptop or tablet)

This video explains all the necessary steps in detail:

Better keep that in mind for the next time that you'll need to migrate your games...

On a side note: if you have enough space on your PC/laptop/tablet, or any other storage medium, you might want to keep a copy of the data regardless of it now already being moved to the new card.

@NEStalgia Let's wait and see first, before we start panicking about stuff that we aren't really sure about, alright?

For now, we're all assuming that additional storage for the Xbox Series X is going to be expensive, but if you look at the medium itself, in its normal form, then it's actually not expensive at all, so unless the Xbox version of it is highly proprietary, it might not be all that different in price.

As for the data duplication bit: I'm no expert on the matter, but I've seen more than one reputable source and/or site write about it and explain this when they were talking about the benefits of the storage media in the newer consoles, and the differences between that and the older media, so I tend to believe it, at least for the most part, if multiple sources basically mention the same thing.

And from what you just mentioned about digital/installed versions of games, another thing comes to mind: why aren't installed games smaller than disc-based, then? More often than not, they're even bigger, although while I'm typing this, I'm considering I've potentially already found the answer, because sometimes, disc-based games contain a decent amount of compressed data, so that could be what makes the difference in total data size between physical and digital.

Ah, so we’re talking about PS5 memes. Even though I’m not buying it or the XBox, here’s my contribution:

On the topic of video game memes, here’s some Animal Crossing gibberish:

@BabyYoshi12
I have something funnier.

Ha-HAH! Let the memes commence! I might get a PS5 eventually, but definitely not day one. I never buy a console day one as I think it's best for some of the kinks to be worked out first.

In other news, I did end up heading to the eye doctor today. My eyes were doing better today, but I did keep my appointment. As I suspected, my issues are allergy-related, so I'm now on some OTC eyedrops they recommended. I had hoped noknfer wearing contacts would help stave off allergic reactions in my eyes, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I wonder what it's like to live in a place with low amounts of pollen and dust.

@ThanosReXXX Heh, slow and steady torture. A quick death is too merciful. I like your style.

Glad that you seem to be feeling better. Migraines definitely aren't a joke. I've felt the light sensitivity and nausea from them more than once; instead of the full ache of your typical headache, it feels like an ice pick being repatedly slammed into your skull. Typically my headaches are few these days and don't normally get that bad. Unlike when I was a teenager.

@Anti-Matter Haha, that’s hilarious!

@ThanosReXXX i think "proprietary Seagate" implies elevated costs, as does xbox 360 history. However the x1 official Seagate drives ended up relatively modestly slightly overpriced.

But ssd in general is relatively expensive in any form still. There's some conflating of ps5 here, though, as supposedly they're mandating their nvme4 that doesn't even exist in the market yet, or some such, according to octane. Not proprietary, but bleeding edge new tech only. X will allow plain old drives for bulk storage at least. Unknown about ps5.

Install size... It's often compressed data, yes. It's also that the dl includes subsequent patch, addon, etc data. And they often just append the new data into the archive. Steam remains the best comparison though. No need for redundant disc data. BUT there's need of low res assets there.

@BabyYoshi12 mini fridge has to always win though. It's like rock paper scissors.... Mini fridge wins every round.