Gaming Is anyone else surprised about the file size of the Pokemone Sun/Moon game on eshop?

[Sonic Angel Knight]

To be upfront, i have not played nor had any intrest in trying it since is been over a decade since i played one or interest in it. But i did decide to visit the eshop and looked at the game. The fact that they always list file size as "BLOCKS" instead of just common measurements like Megabytes or Gigabytes, i decided to check freeshop. According to that is 3GB big. To be honest this intrigued me to a degree, while the other two games X/Y and Ruby/Sapphire on 3ds is smaller (under 2GB) is very surpising to me to wonder why this game is so large.

According to my knowledge not many games are over 3GB in size, only other i know is Metal gear solid 3D and Xenoblade chronicles (might be one more but not sure) So i just wondered what could it be? Going back a bit to wii games, there been like only 3 games that used dual layered DVD disc (Those disc can hold double size of normal ones being around 5GB and dual layer being upp to 10GB) Only 3 games i know has that and is super smash bros brawl, metroid other m, and Xenoblade chronicles with metroid being the biggest of the 3.

To me i usually base the ammount of effort and content developers put into making the game, as well as how much i think i should be paying for it by file size. 3GB for a 3ds game is uncommon so it just got me thinking just how much work they did on it than the other two before it? To be honest i still dunno the maximum capacity of the 3DS carts so i just wonder, anyone else have anything to say about it? You know this topic of the file size, not how much you dislike or like the game, cause there is already enough of that in other postings around here.

 

[vayanui8]

It surprises me alot too. I honestly have no idea where the added filesize came from since there aren't exactly a lot of new pokemon and the region is relatively small. Maybe the Z moves and cutscenes take up alot of space for some reason

 

[nero99]

It's a big game because of the mostly open world, trainers are viewed in battle now, battle scenes and cut scenes are big as well. Just because the region isn't huge, that doesn't mean the game will be small

 

[Arkansaw]

Because it is a multi7+ with asian languages?

 

[escequi]

Prob because of their shitty new graphics

 

[DDTarZan]

Maybe they added a whole gig just to fit the awful black outlines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[xtheman]

Maybe they added a whole gig just to fit the awful black outlines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All the games had the outlines. Sun/moon's outlines are just the most noticable

Spoiler

 

[Trolling]

Xenoblade 3D is around 3.7 GB making it the largest 3DS game. 3.0+ GB isn't that rare nowadays, just go to freeshop and sort on size.

 

[Clydefrosch]

the size is due to the high quality (much higher quality than the 3ds screen can display) pokemon models, which were probably made with reuse in future mobile/switch games in mind.

the game itself is somewhat small as far as scale go, though with towns and routes being more intertwined and squished together, the world itself seems less empty than in x/y for example.

Because it is a multi7+ with asian languages?

nah, text makes up less than 100mb. probably less than 10mb...

 

[AydenTheKilla]

i bet their will be a Kanto DLC or something along those lines, thats why we cant use our pokemon from oras for a while

 

[Arras]

Basing effort/quality on filesize is not a good idea. It's easy for games to just include a ton of prerendered cutscenes (Ideally poorly compressed, 1080p with hardcoded subtitles in multiple languages - looking at you, Final Fantasy 13), way too large textures, way too high quality models or similar things. Sun/Moon has extremely high quality (for 3DS) 3D models of things IIRC, which is also why the framerate is so abysmal.

 

[Falo]

No it doesn't surprise me,
~1,54 GB = Poke & Character 3D Models
~416 MB = Music/Sound Effects
~174 MB = Movies (Title Screen in 9 languages)
~33MB text files in 10 languages
~803 MB = Other Files (more 3d models, data, picture, layout, ...)
Most of the other files are also in 10 languages, example battle interface is 15,5 MB per language.

The 3d models in this game are clearly not made for 3ds, they are made for a next gen console.
Most likely they didn't want to re-create them in the next 10-20 years.
Also there is no hidden kanto dlc...

What surprises me is, they didn't use a good compression, if you compress the full decrypted cia, it goes down to ~1,7 GB.

 

[xile6]

Files size doesnt always tell whats in it.
Some games are compress and will run a bit slower compress but saves space.
Other games arent compress as much for fast load times.

But with the sun and moon. It think its mainly the graphic change that made the file size go up. I believe the game has as much content as the others

 

[dimmidice]

i bet their will be a Kanto DLC or something along those lines, thats why we cant use our pokemon from oras for a while

Datamining would've shown that.

 

[Arkansaw]

Has to be grsphics, the game feels really sluggish in battles compared to xy

 

[Mikemk]

I don't know about the game specifically, but if you look closely, you'll notice every pokemon generation has been about double the previous size.

 

[LuxerWap]

Prob because of their shitty new graphics

Hey now, I like the new graphics. They worked hard on it. Not like you could do better.

 

[CeeDee]

Hey now, I like the new graphics. They worked hard on it. Not like you could do better.

Maybe what he means is more, the size of them. I've heard the models for the Pokemon were rather big, especially for a 3DS game, and unlike the last games, the rest of S/M's models (like trainers, for example) are very detailed as well.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Hey now, I like the new graphics. They worked hard on it. Not like you could do better.

To be honest, with the 3ds low quality resolution, is probably isn't and never was best for 3D model games, in my opinion, is practically the same situation as the sega saturn was in, is mostly designed for 2D sprite graphics not 3D models. Even the psvita has 900X540 resolution (according to some is a HD format) but besides that 3D games look better on there than 3DS, even with the XL varity. Most 2D sprite games on Handheld looks a lot better on mobile devices, but 3D models were just better looking on Larger display screens, or least better graphic processor chips... or engines.

Some games on 3ds that have 3d models don't look all that bad, some games on mobile peroid don't look bad in 3d, but 2D just makes things easier, and the 3d effect on them work well. Look at all the sega 3d classics, Sonic, out run, gunstar heroes... I would like to have seen vector man or beyond oasis on 3d classics as well.

But i just believe the developers used poor graphics engine when making some games on that system, if they wanted cheap alternatives, they should just stick with 2d sprite work, there is that retro engine that sonic cd on android used, there is capcom mt framework mobile (used by both phoenix wright ace attorney games on 3ds And Ultimate marvel vs capcom 3 on psvita) There were options but perhaps not the best ones. Super mario 3d land looks great, and that was 5 years ago.

 

[Sizednochi]

Prob because of their shitty new graphics

Says the entitled pirate.

Easy to diss on something you got for free huh?

The graphics are fine for what the 3DS can handle, and the pokemon models are very high poly and future proof because they didn't want to remake 800 models again in the next generation. This added with the higher poly overworld graphics (Gen 6 had DS-level graphics for the overworld) and trainer models, makes up for 3GB.