What Id really like to know is, does anyone decide NOT to download a game because its just too big to do over 3G? Or maybe because you're concerned about how much memory its gonna take up? Or maybe you think that 100mb for, say, $2.99 is a good deal? Personally, sometimes I love the look of a game but then realise its 100mb and I really cant be bothered to wait until I get home so I pick the stuff that comes in under 10mb so I can play it right away. What do other people think? Does size matter, or is it what you do with it that counts?
I'm jailbroken with 3G unrestrictor, so no worries for me. But on topic, I don't care if it is 2 mb or 200 mb, if it looks cool, I'll take a screenshot of it and pick it up when I can.
Yeah for me size does matter. Sometimes I'm here on TA, I read about some game and I want to buy it. But if it's more than 10mb I can't download it through 3g and I have to wait till I get home. And by the time I get home I don't want to buy it anymore.
Nope, I prefer it to be a larger file size actually, it means there's more content, graphics, better sound, etc. I love games that are 200 MB and above. I don't keep games on my Touch after I beat them so no problems here!
Such mixed responses - interesting. But I have to say my understanding is that larger file size doesn't always mean anything's better about the game. Sometimes it's just slopping coding etc.
Absolutely true. Maybe they used uncompressed WAV files for audio, or large 32 bit per pixel images and scaled them down (which is memory and processor speed wasting). There are a lot of people developing apps who have no clue about memory optimization, taking a look around some of the iPhone dev forums reveals a shocking lack of knowledge. In Rogue Touch, using mp3 for the three musical sequences and a 4th for dungeon background audio was still quite a lot. Total app size is 5.8MB, but if I removed the audio it'd only be about 1.5MB My next adventure will likely weigh in between 50-100 hours playtime, and I am going to try my best to get it down to 9.9MB in size. It's going to be tough to slim down because the graphics and animation are going to be huge this time around! My impression has been that it's easier to get that impulse buy if you can download it anywhere. Too much new stuff if coming out daily- if the person has to wait, he/she may simply download something else and forget about you! It'd be very interesting to see results of the same app at 9.5MB and 10.5MB to find out what happens. I bet the 9.5MB version would be downloaded at least twice as often!
For what it's worth Ground Effect will be under 10MB. I haven't been fighting to sqeeze it down, that's just how big it is. I didn't download Aves because it takes about as much space as two albums worth of high quality mp3s. I know its a special case with that amazing audio tech but...
Nice to hear from a couple of devs! Thanks for explaining the tec CommanderData and I'll definitely be looking out for your next title. I think if more people were aware of the potential reasons for large file sizes, they wouldn't be so impressed & assume it's necessarily about quality & content. Glenn, that's just why I didn't buy Aves. It looked great but I was concerned about my paltry 8g of space with all my other stuff. Ground Effect is already on my shopping list - can't wait!
