Report: GTA V For PC Ships on a Whopping Seven Disks

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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Report: GTA V For PC Ships on a Whopping Seven Disks


Since the vast majority of PC users still use the good 'ol DVD drive, the physical version of GTA V will be pretty hefty.

While a lot of PC gamers have made the jump to full-on digital distribution, there's still a large number who due to various reasons (collection, poor internet), cling to their physical boxed copies. The problem being that DVD is still the standard for PC, and while that was fine 10, or even five years ago, these days games are getting a little too big to cram onto the decades-old format.

Case in point: the PC version of this reddit thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/grand%20theft%20auto%20v?os=grand+theft+auto+v], will ship on a whopping seven disks. Check out the ridiculousness to the right.

By comparison, 2008's GTA IV shipped across just two discs, although it's 18 GB install size is quite paltry compared to GTA V's 65 GB. Whether you choose to buy the game digitally or physically, you better make some space on your hard drive for it to fit... especially you poor guys using SSDs.

Provided that there are pre-load the game right now on Steam [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/139430-Grand-Theft-Auto-V-PC-Release-Delayed-PC-Specs-GTA-V].

Source: Video Gamer [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/31vco4/gta_v_on_pc_will_take_place_on_7_dvd_discs/]

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FoolKiller

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Feb 8, 2008
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It seems like nice art work on the discs though so at least it has that going for it.

Although I would say another big reason that people are buying on DVD isn't that it's poor internet so much as a capped internet.
 

Villan33

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Never quite understood the problem with multiple disks. Suppose it was simply 'cause I grew up in a era when games that needed multiple disks (in some cases around 30 floppys) weren't that uncommon. Seven seems quite quaint by comparison. :)
 

The_Great_Galendo

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Given the low price per GB of storage media, I'm almost surprised that there isn't a cheaper way of doing this. I guess DVD is still about as cheap as it comes, though.

Also, I can totally sympathize with anyone who wants a physical copy. Sixty-five GB would be a looong download even on my fast-enough-for-most-purposes connection (something like 1.5 MB/sec, IIRC). I just did the calculations, and it'd take about 12 hours. Not too bad if you can let it run overnight, but still way faster to install from DVD. And as another poster mentioned, data caps/data throttling is a thing. So 12 hours is probably an optimistic number.
 

JCAll

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DVDs are cheap to produce. You would have to stick the game on a hundred of them to need to inflate price of the game to cover it. Let them keep putting things on DVD. Better than 14 floppies. God, nobody misses that.
 

Sillarra

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Aug 14, 2014
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65 GB is the install size, or the game size?

Seriously, do they not compress installation files anymore?
 

Jaeger_CDN

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The_Great_Galendo said:
Given the low price per GB of storage media, I'm almost surprised that there isn't a cheaper way of doing this. I guess DVD is still about as cheap as it comes, though..
There is a cheaper way ... thumb drive which would be an interesting way of doing it. I've heard of some bands selling their albums by thumb drive rather than CD.
 

Lunar Templar

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>.>

really? 7 disks? in this day and age? wow ... Rock Star really does not give a fuck about the PC do they ... I mean I'm not the most PC savy out there but even I know there's better ways of shipping large games like that then this.
 

Coach Morrison

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Sillarra said:
65 GB is the install size, or the game size?

Seriously, do they not compress installation files anymore?
According to steam it seems to be the game size, it likely will be compressed to at least 40 something gigs.
 

Yokillernick

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May 11, 2012
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Meh already preloaded my copy and I'm pretty sure it didn't take as much time as installing from 7 disks would. Considering the fact that I do not have dial up internet or capped internet.


For real do like the places you live not sell uncapped internet or is it too expensive to get it?
 

Rad Party God

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Feb 23, 2010
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7 disks... damn, and here I thought 5 CDs for the original WoW installation was a bit too much. And not just regular DVDs, they have to be DL-DVDs. Either way, digital or physical, it's definitely gonna take a while before you can play your shiny new game.
 

frizzlebyte

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Why not put out a version on Blu-Ray? I mean, sure, there's probably not that many gamers with a Blu-ray drive in their PCs, but it'd be a great option for those of us who do and would like to have a physical copy of the game.
 

NickBrahz

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frizzlebyte said:
Why not put out a version on Blu-Ray? I mean, sure, there's probably not that many gamers with a Blu-ray drive in their PCs, but it'd be a great option for those of us who do and would like to have a physical copy of the game.
Because then they risk having overstock of DVD's not getting sold because everybody is buying Blu-ray or vice versa.
 

Hairless Mammoth

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Ah, the joys of multiple install discs are coming back. Does, the DVD version completely install on the HDD and use Steamworks or other DRM? It would be quite nostalgic to have to swap discs when driving across the map. (Nostalgic yes, but not fun after the first couple times though.)
frizzlebyte said:
Why not put out a version on Blu-Ray? I mean, sure, there's probably not that many gamers with a Blu-ray drive in their PCs, but it'd be a great option for those of us who do and would like to have a physical copy of the game.
I got a Blu ray writer in my PC. The internal writers and external readers are $50, if you give even half effort at searching for them. But, I assume Rockstar wanted to reach the broadest audience possible, who wanted physical media or had internet that couldn't handle the download.

Really, though, I'd recommend every PC gamer (who still cares about aluminum coated data frisbees) getting at least one USB blu ray reader, that can be easily shared between systems, to be future proofed in case publishers do embrace blu ray. (And you can watch movies with it until that happens, or back up your porn stuff with a writer.)
 

MercurySteam

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Sillarra said:
65 GB is the install size, or the game size?
65GB is what they have under hard disk requirements so that's probably how big the game will be once installed.

Steven Bogos said:
you better make some space on your hard drive for it to fit... especially you poor guys using SSDs.
Now this I don't understand. First off almost nobody bothers storing their games on SSDs cause all they really affect are loading times which means you'd be far better off getting a better CPU instead. Secondly, with the sizes of games nowadays no one is going to be storing their game libraries on their SSDs anyway. Of course now that you can buy 1TB SSDs maybe people are already doing it.
 

P-89 Scorpion

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Jaeger_CDN said:
The_Great_Galendo said:
Given the low price per GB of storage media, I'm almost surprised that there isn't a cheaper way of doing this. I guess DVD is still about as cheap as it comes, though..
There is a cheaper way ... thumb drive which would be an interesting way of doing it. I've heard of some bands selling their albums by thumb drive rather than CD.

USB drive would only be quicker rather than cheaper and for a low 'print run' for one country it makes sense (no global distribution for music on USB drives).

For a multinational corporation that prints millions of discs a year DVD is cheaper and quicker.
 

Scars Unseen

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Sounds like it's about time for some publisher to put their foot down and make a hard switch to BluRay. This is about how many discs we had to deal with when the switch from CD-ROM to DVD happened. And BluRay drives aren't exactly expensive on the low end anymore.
 

ServebotFrank

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Whelp, good thing I have 2 Terabytes of Harddrive space specifically in preparation for how large games are getting.
 

Malpraxis

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Some big publisher should make a deal with an electronics company, and start bundling special editions with cheap BR drives. Other publishers will follow, and it will become the standard in less than a year.
 

Saulkar

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Coach Morrison said:
Sillarra said:
65 GB is the install size, or the game size?

Seriously, do they not compress installation files anymore?
According to steam it seems to be the game size, it likely will be compressed to at least 40 something gigs.
Actually trying to download it now and it is a less optimistic 59Gigs which is a 30 hour download for me (if my younger brother was not already downloading 2 games tonight, HMPH).