Games optimised for the Xbox One X can look better on the new console than they do on older hardware, but adding HDR support, 4K textures and other enhancements takes a bit more space. With three games taking up over a third of my console’s drive, 1TB of storage isn’t gonna cut it.
I’ve spent the past year slowly filling up 2TB of storage on my Xbox One, so it was alarming to see the storage meter on the lower left of the screen rapidly filling as I downloaded fresh games to the Xbox One X’s 1TB drive.
If you’d told me a decade ago that one day I’d be complaining about only having one terabyte of storage, I’d be very surprised and curious about how you got into my house.
To be fair, the Xbox One X’s 1TB drive isn’t completely open to game downloads. Of the 1,024 gigabytes that make up a terabyte, only 780.9 are available for game and app installs and captures.
Luckily I had an external hard drive handy.
Let’s take a look at the Xbox One X enhanced games I have installed so far. Halo 5: Guardians is the current space-taking champ at 107GB, following a 15GB update that enables playing at native 4K resolution. Gears of War 4, already a hefty install on a regular Xbox One, takes up 103.3GB fully enhanced.
Forza Motorsport 7, which recently updated to Xbox One X enhanced, takes up 95GB.
Those three games alone total 305.3GB. If I remembered how to use the calculator correctly, that’s nearly 40 per cent of the Xbox One X’s hard drive space right there.
More modest games like FIFA 18, the recently-updated Middle-earth: Shadow of War and the technically not playable yet Star Wars Battlefront II seem to enjoy hanging out in the 45GB range.
That’s not too bad. I could load 17 of those on 1TB no problem. But if I want to play more than a handful of games the size of Halo 5, Gears 4 or say, Quantum Break (currently downloading 83.70GB, not counting video files), extra space is going to come in really handy.
Each new game update steals another piece of the pie. I’m currently downloading a 30GB update for Ark: Survival Evolved, which adds a 1440p, high-quality 30 frames-per-second mode to the game, as well as an enhanced 60 frames-per-second 1080p mode.
That’s a lot of data. It should make the game look a lot better, but damn.
Long story short, if you’re going to be playing a lot of games on your Xbox One X, it wouldn’t hurt to have an external hard drive handy. That, or wait until a more sensible 2TB or higher version of the console is released down the line.
Comments
28 responses to “The Xbox One X’s Hard Drive Can Fill Up Pretty Fast”
I feel like these sizes need to be more widely reported as they’re a real big deal in Australia with the stupid data caps everywhere.
this.
I’ve started allowing my mates to bring there consoles round for updates and downloads.
Poor ADSL and the size of some of those downloads…
Thankfully NBN 100/40 and unlimited – so far we’re at 2200gb for the billing cycle with 11 days to go… wonder when the FUP email will be sent.
Those 4k packs are huuuuuge
Given the dog’s breakfast that is the NBN, it won’t surprise me if we start seeing a shift from digital back towards physical distribution in this country in a couple of years when the next gen consoles come out and the 4K versions of games are the standard, not an optional extra.
I think that ship has sailed to be honest. See Neg 0 below; a purchase these days, particularly for AAA titles, generally comes with a patch or 5, often running to tens of Gb in size.
So even if people do go back to buying the physical disc (which I far prefer to do myself), it doesn’t stop the downloads and installs. To use Final Fantasy XV as an example, having the disc didn’t change the need to install and patch 60 Gb of data onto my HDD.
The disc merely avoided the download of the install file in the first place. Its not going to get better as we transition to 4K.
well – anyone suffering in Canberra – hit me up.
Physical distribution of patches then?
I remember when I bought the first Discworld adventure game: it came on CD-ROM, but there was a floppy disk in the box with the day-1 patch.
The way around it used to be to buy the physical release but nowadays you take that home and if you even got a disc in the package you still have to download 20-30gb. On an average ADSL connection that’ll take you all week. 🙁
I have adsl and the highest speed I’ve ever achieved on the PS Network is about 2mb a second.
Is this normal?
You must have a very good ADSL2 connection. Most people on ADSL get around 4-5mbit if they’re lucky, which is a maximum download speed of around 500k/sec. If you’re getting 2mb/sec you’re probably on a 20mbit connection – ADSL2+ can theoretically get to 24mbit but you’d have to basically live in the telephone exchange to get that.
FUP’s disappeared along time ago back when ADSL was a thing, so enjoy downloading until your hearts content.
… funny you say that, iiNet have sent me emails in the past regarding the amount of data being pulled.
my account was set to unlimited, but they throttled the connection after 4tb.
Which then makes it a 4T data cap, not “unlimited”.
Righto mate.
Read the FUP on iiNet site.
It’s unlimited with no cap, yet they throttled it.
Stop trying to be clever.
You’re being about as useful as someone asking what day it is and thinking you’re so funny by saying ‘today’
Yeah it’s getting pretty ridiculous. I can see my mate (mid 40s) who is stuck in an area that can’t even get ADSL, nevermind NBN buying one of these thinking “Oh cool I’ll just buy a console, that way I don’t have to download stuff to play” and getting the rudest surprise ever.
Remind me, what’s the size of the PS4 Pro’s internal HDD? Oh, exactly the same, thanks.
Yeah, but there’s not really much (any?) native 4K content on Pro, so the installs are going to be smaller.
I’d be curious to see how XB1X download sizes compare to the same games on PC if they run in the same resolution.
Exactly. Stop making this about console wars.
I would gladly spend the time downloading huge patches if the PRO updated any existing games with 4K textures instead of minor fidelity increases and FPS stability.
Why are there none?
its not just consoles. As games get prettier, more fancy and complex it generally equates to additional files / size. its not out of the norm for a single game to be 100GB these days.
This is why there is a big push for ‘cloud gaming’ and thin clients but were a long way of making that successful, till then just keep throwing HDDs at your system till you can build a fort out of them.
Huge day one patches irk me, to the point it pushed me more and more just to go digital so I can have the game preloaded come launch day rather than stick a disc in only to start a huge patch that leaves me not playing the game for a day or two.
Huge game installs, well cant get 4K textures without them so no real complaints there, other than the poor internet infrastructure we have here!
So why are these so big anyway? I’m generally playing on PC and these games are more like 40gb, not 80-100gb. Are all the textures decompressed or something?
I wonder if it’s getting both the standard XB1 version AND the XB1X version ie 2 sets of assets etc?
Did Gears of War 4 get an X update? Or Forza Horizon 3? I own both digitally which means they’re cross-play titles. According to the Windows 10 Store, Forza Horizon 3 is 60gb and Gears 4 is a whopping 118gb.
However some recent non-MS PC releases:
– Wolfenstein II is 44gb
– Assassin’s Creegypt is 41gb
– Destiny 2 is 35gb
I think maybe MS is not being as efficient storage-wise as they could be…
Those numbers are approximate sizes if you had everything downloaded including all DLC. The storage sizes listed on the store are simply reccomendations, And not what the actual download size is.
These sizes are directly comparable to the PC version installs 😉
40GB DL is 1080p textures and assets.
Fallout 4 for example is a 40GB DL on steam and the 4K Texture pack is a 55 GB DL. 4K Textures are essentially 1080P textures x4. So yes the file sizes are big.
I feel it was a missed opportunity with the X to include a way for users to replace the HDD size, ala PS3\4.
You can just plug in a USB drive, though, can’t you? Not as neat, but at least it’s quicker and easier than replacing the internal drive. That damn screw in the PS3 almost made me throw the whole thing out the window when I was replacing that internal drive.
Heh, you certainly can (and I already have), although your completely right, it’d be cleaner just to be able to upgrade it yourself. I have a 2TB SSHD (now in a 2.5″ USB enclosure) that’s somewhat begging to be installed as an internal drive. Tempted to break my warranty to do so.