Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is making headlines as the first good Xbox exclusive in a long while, in large part thanks to its glowing reviews. It offers players an exhilarating adventure as the iconic titular character, filled with action-packed escapades and thrilling puzzles. However, while fans of the original films and MachineGames' brand of first-person action games are enjoying it, there is one major caveat.

Among the Great Circle's best features is a ridiculously large file size, the kind that would make any gamer blush. It's becoming a point of controversy, not simply because it is taking up too much space on player's already cramped Xbox Series X/S consoles, but because it's continuing a gaming trend that people are quickly becoming exhausted with. While Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn't the first game to have a large file size, it might just be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Is 130GB On Xbox

It's 87GB Without The High-Resolution Texture Pack

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is continuing a recent gaming trend of having a ridiculously large file size that's sure to require multiple games to be uninstalled in order to squeeze it in. On Xbox Series X/S, the game's full file size comes in at a whopping 133.9GB, according to the official Xbox store listing, with the console asking for 263.1GB of storage space before ing it. This is unreasonably large, although perhaps not unexpected in today's gaming climate.

It is worth noting that without the high-resolution texture pack, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is around 87GB. While significantly smaller, this is still an enormous file size, especially when the base Xbox Series S only has 512GB of storage.

While this is one of the few mistakes it makes, it is nevertheless a frustrating issue exacerbated for those who've already installed a library of necessary games. For those who play multiplayer shooters, for example, trying to get another 100GB+ game installed can be a challenge. Unfortunately, as aforementioned, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not the first game to do this, as many games before it have seen their file sizes balloon beyond expectations.

Video Game File Sizes Are Getting Out Of Control

They're Becoming Unreasonably Huge

The most infamous example of increasing file sizes is the Call of Duty franchise, which, over the past few years, has seen its installation size rise to well beyond the 200GB mark. Black Ops 6 is the worst in this regard, as it required 309.85GB of storage space to install at launch. However, other single-player titles have also suffered from increased file sizes, including Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Horizon Forbidden West, Forspoken, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Starfield.

Of course, this hasn't come out of nowhere as file sizes have been slowly creeping up over the past few years. It's largely down to texture resolution, with additional storage space needed to house the huge amounts of detailed textures that make up these photorealistic sprawling worlds players have been enjoying exploring. This is why Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, for example, has a smaller file size when players drop the high-resolution texture pack.

Unfortunately, it is a price fans must pay in order to enjoy the grander scale and ambition of modern-day triple-A experiences, at least until a more efficient method of storing these high-resolution textures is developed.

Additionally, this is why games like Black Ops 6 are always online as they use texture streaming to avoid ing a lot of 2K or even 4K textures directly to the player's PC or console. Unfortunately, it is a price fans must pay in order to enjoy the grander scale and ambition of modern-day triple-A experiences, at least until a more efficient method of storing these high-resolution textures is developed.

Console Storage Space Can't Keep Up With Ballooning Game Sizes

1TB Is Just Not Enough Anymore

What makes this problem so frustrating is that consoles are failing to keep up with these ballooning file sizes. As aforementioned, the base Xbox Series S model comes in at just 512GB, meaning players could only install the equivalent of 3 and a half Indiana Jones and the Great Circles before they ran out of space. Even with the 1TB model for both the Series X and PlayStation 5 it can still be a struggle to have more than five or so games installed at any given time.

Of course, this isn't as big of an issue for those who primarily play indie titles. However, if someone wanted to have Overwatch 2, Fortnite, Black Ops 6, Starfield, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle installed at once, they'd need at least 520GB of space. There are solutions to this problem, at least on the player's side. This includes getting an external hard drive to store excess games on or replacing the SSD with a 2TB one.

However, these are costly and arguably an unreasonable expense, especially considering consoles should meet the current gaming standards. Players shouldn't have to be forced to compromise in order to install one game, so it is up to either developers or the technical wizards behind the PS6 and whatever Xbox creates to remedy this issue. Simply put, it's not feasible to own a console with less than 1TB of storage these days, especially if one wants to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as well as practically any other game.

Source: Xbox.com