Topic: Does a game on disc take up less room on your HD then a digital game?

So I have been arguing with a friend on this for quite some time. According to him if you get a physical copy of a game on disc it will take up less room on your hard drive then a digital of the same title. His reasoning is that the disc doesn't install the entire game on the disc just a portit of it which is why you need to insert the disc still to play the game. Digital on the other hand has to install the entire game cause well there is no disc to read the rest of the information possible to run the game off of.

So does anyone know for certain? I mean it kind of makes sense but I can't see that as people who buy a large amount of digital games would have to be consistently upgrading their hard drives as opposed to people who buy physical.

I thought this might be an interesting topic to see what the community here has to say. So let's put this thing to rest.

Hey man,
From my experience, the digital copy does take up considerably more space on your hard drive than a physical copy. I saw this a while back when I bought a physical copy of Grand Theft Auto 5, and accidentally downloaded the digital copy as well. The digital copy took up more space.

@moetivity28 But did it actually take up more space on the drive once installed or just to download? As it needs extra space available to do the download and then install, but it doesn't end up using all that space in the end. Also the digital version would have come with patches etc. Did you fully update the disc version?

In my opinion both should be the same. I don't see how the console can access data from the disc quickly enough on the fly, while deleting other data that it may later need access to again, and not cause problems.

However maybe it differs from game to game. For example sound files or full motion video could load of the disc perhaps?

You could check some game file sizes against games advertised on the PlayStation store.

@Tasuki It would be easy to check! Look at the file sizes on your PS4 and list a couple of (common) games, physical or digital, and if others can join in, we'll know it soon enough. I'm not at home unfortunately, otherwise I would've checked them myself.

Correction: Physical games generally take up less HDD space than digital ones on the HDD because only part of the game is installed to the HDD. If using a disc then the textures, sounds and so on may be transferred to the HDD but the FMVs and music stay on the disc. If you buy the game digitally then everything the game needs to run has to be downloaded on the HDD thus taking up more space. The actual size of the games would be the same. But when using a disc not everything needs to be transferred to the HDD like with a digital copy.

@Tasuki easy way to sort this find a few games he has physical that you have digital and just look how much room they take on your systems

but as far as i'm aware the entire game is installed off the disc onto the HDD and all the disc is after that is a licence check so they should be the same size, not taking DLC and the like into account of course

although saying that sometimes the same game can be different sizes on different systems for example i have FFXV on both PS4 and XBOX ONE and on the PS4 it's 73GB in size but on XB1 with all the same DLC and updates installed (season pass Episodes and Royal Pack) it's 103GB in size

@moetivity28 Thanks for the info. Since you are new here you might want to take a moment and read the community rules. Just be aware

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@Octane Unfortunately I am not home either and won't be for a few more days.

@Tasuki If you don't mind waiting for an answer, I can check my PS4 on Monday. All my games are physical by the way.

Digital games may well have patches etc too that add to the size of the game so its a bigger install. I thought the game code was installed from disc, inc all the assets and language packs too and the disc just has the licence on it. The differences in size are related to patches. Its difficult nowadays though to check exactly what the downloaded games have compared to a Disc as you will automatically download any patches too which will impact on the game size. I don't here the disc drive spinning - not that I pay much attention - other than at the start up which may well be the check to see if I have a valid licence to play...

@Octane @Tasuki I can do the same. All of mine are physical.

@BAMozzy I could swear that when I download a digital game the patches come after the initial download.

Pretty sure it varies from game to game.

@Jaz007 I don't know, I don't buy Digital by choice but they must have the patches too where as Physical games can be installed without them - some games may well have the updated games/content to download where as the disc will only be the game as it was when it went gold. Just a thought as to why there could be a difference...

@BAMozzy @Jaz007 I'm pretty sure when you install a game whether it will be from disk or digital, the latest patch will download automatically and install when you next start the game. If it is from disk this obviously won't happen unless your console is connected to the internet.

Injustice 2 Standard Edition - 27.35GB on the ps store and 27.39GB on the back of the disk case, 35GB on my hdd from the disk.

@Tasuki I don't think consoles read games from disk these days, PS4 and XBO were not designed that way. It might have worked that way in the 360/PS3 era.

If you are playing a disk-based game, the system will begin caching the disc when you put it in the console and get ready to play. The game is saving part of itself to the system's hard drive. The amount of data that has to be saved before you can start will vary per title.

So I think your mate is wrong, as my understanding is that the whole game is installed whether you buy it digitally or have the disk.

@JohnnyShoulder In truth, I have only installed a couple of games from disc on Playstation in the past year - GoW and SM. I have only bought 1 game digitally too - R&C - none of these though do I have the other (physical or digital) version to actually compare. Most of the time, I end up playing one of the free PS+ games whilst waiting for installation or switch HDMI's to the TV to watch something. I really can't remember when the updates install when buying digitally or whether updates happen during or after installation when installing a physical game.

My most recent installations have been from disc on Xbox and you get asked whether you want to install the update now (during installation from disc) or later. If you select now, you get a 'dual' installation happening - the update from the internet and the installation from disc simultaneously. I can't recall being asked with PS (maybe the way things are set up) and not sure if its an automatic update during installation or after the game has installed from disc.

It seems though that if you are comparing the size as stated on the case and the HDD space that the difference is more likely to be from post release updates which will certainly be installed if you buy digitally as you are certainly connected to the internet.

As I said above, I really can't recall hearing the disc spin whilst playing. I am 90% sure that when I added Sunset Overdrive to my GwG collection, not downloading it, just added it via the Xbox Website, I could play that game without having to put the disc in or downloading anything. That would indicate that everything was installed from Disc and by adding it to my GwG, I had the licence to play linked to my account. If only part of it was installed, I would have had to wait for the rest of the game to install from the digital version. I don't know if PS works that way but I guess if any game that I have installed comes up on PS+ in the future, if I add it to my collection via the website, when I turn on my PS4 I can see if I can play the game without having to install bits - if it works the same way of course.

@BAMozzy Actually i think i was wrong before, when you download a game on ps4 it will do it in two parts. A smaller file which lets you play the game quicker, and then the rest of the game in a larger file. I'm not sure if a separate update file is then downloaded.

@Tasuki if that was the case, what your friend is saying, then hdd required space on disc trays would be lower, not exactly the same as digital. Your friend is wrong, disc is used to install a game and afterwards it's used as a licence check. If consoles were always online like ms imagined it initially we wouldn't even need discs to do licence checks. If data were read from blue ray disc then we would have pop in of textures and similar artifacts. Digital and download need the same amount of space and it's the same on both consoles.

@Tasuki The answer depends on which system you are referring to for PS4 all data is installed on the hard drive. For shadow of the Tomb Raider. The case say’s a minimum of 30 GB PSN say’s 30.53 GB but the actual amount of space my diskcopy takes up on my hard drive is 38.48 GB

For PS3 games some games run of the disc. For instance Tomb Raider(reboot) only needs a minimum of 6 MB of hard disk space.