Microsoft’s “biggest” game has the worst pre-install offering I’ve seen — gamers won’t escape these gigantic day-one downloads

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What you need to know

  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, an upcoming game for Xbox and PC that simulates flights around the entire globe, will be released on November 19.
  • Available as a standalone release and as a part of Game Pass subscriptions, the game offers users a chance to pre-install its files before launch.
  • Currently, a pre-installation amounts to no more than 330.09MB on Xbox and 12.9MB on PC, far below the ‘approximate’ 50GB listed on its store page.

As an analyst with over two decades of gaming under my belt, I find myself intrigued yet perplexed by Microsoft’s latest pre-installation strategy for Flight Simulator 2024 and STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

Tomorrow, November 19th, Microsoft is set to launch its newest aerial simulation game, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Building upon the 2020 version, this new release introduces a career mode, numerous challenges, and photography assignments focused on capturing the world in stunning detail. Essentially, it’s an advancement of the comprehensive globe simulator that requires at least 150GB of storage for the core game on both Xbox and PC due to its incredibly realistic aircraft and surroundings.

Instead of taking up a large portion of your hard drive for just one game, the extensive updates across all aspects make it understandable for avid fans. Fortunately, Microsoft allows early installation and play on launch day for this new edition through their retail and Game Pass services, reducing the usual wait for downloads due to server congestion caused by high demand.

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The idea behind this pre-loading incentive was to save time, but it seems there’s a mismatch between expectation and reality. On my Xbox Series X, the pre-installed filesize is only about 330MB, which equates to less than 1% of the reported size (50GB) for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The situation on the PC side appears even more unusual, with a pre-installation of just 12.9MB via the Xbox app, representing an incredibly small fraction (0.02%) of the game’s total size.

Are these tiny modern pre-installs just bugs?

For four years since its launch in 2016, installing Microsoft Flight Simulator’s 2020 release has seldom been a smooth experience for me. It frequently slowed download speeds and disregarded the impact on my internet service provider, with similar issues persisting as I switched from Xbox to PC using Game Pass Ultimate. On one occasion, an entire workday was spent downloading the game, only to find that it had progressed to about 75% completion by quitting time.

Delighted was I to find out that Microsoft allows users to go through a long setup process ahead of playing time, particularly considering Flight Simulator 2024 requires a massive 81GB per hour in bandwidth at peak times. Pre-downloading the game could potentially reduce data strain for those with limited bandwidth, but my excitement quickly faded when I realized that only a minimal portion of its files were being loaded up.

As a fervent admirer, I can’t help but ponder if Microsoft may have stumbled upon an extraordinary data compression technique to condense their digital representation of Earth into mere hundreds of megabytes. If this isn’t the case, then it seems there might be an issue at hand.

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It’s unfortunate that the trend continues with STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, my most eagerly awaited game for 2024, as it shares a common problem with a humorous installation size of 10.12MB on PC Game Pass. If I had Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s absurd 330.09MB, I could download and enjoy a pixelated spin-off, ZERO Sievert, pretending that I have early access to something more substantial than empty folders.

If Microsoft hasn’t discovered a miraculous method to condense their digital representation of Earth into just a few hundred megabytes, something seems amiss. However, I’m excitedly anticipating trying out the game with some of my preferred flight controllers that I’ve already tested using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Keep an eye out for my thoughts on the 2024 update as soon as it becomes available for download.

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2024-11-18 19:39