100GB Game Downloads Aren't the Problem, Predatory Data Caps Are

You might not know it, but there's a good chance your Internet provider added a bandwidth cap to your service at some point. If it hasn't happened yet, it's probably on the horizon. This happened to me with Comcast last fall, when the company capped my bandwidth at 1TB. This hasn't proved a problem for me yet—the closest I've come to hitting that cap is nearly 600GB last December—but a story yesterday caught my eye, and has me sweating my digital future.

Forza Motorsport 7 launches on October 3, more than a month before Microsoft's due to release Xbox One X, the 4K-ready gaming hardware it used to showcase the game at E3. 4K assets are enormous, however, which is why it's relatively unsurprising to learn the game will require 100GB when downloaded digitally. The file sizes for games are only going to get bigger, not smaller.

Gaming website Stevivor asked Microsoft for confirmation on the download size, and in the process, learned some interesting details about how the company's handling the transition to 4K video games.

In the future, Xbox Live will determine which version of the game you're downloading based on the console you own, not the display you're using. If you're using an original Xbox One or Xbox One S, you'll get the 1080p version. If you're using an Xbox One X, you'll get the 4K version. Makes sense.

"With the launch of Xbox One X, when it comes to game content our intention is to download the correct assets to the correct console," said a company spokesperson to Stevivor.

I don't play video games on a 4K TV, nor is that likely to happen anytime soon, sadly. I have a 1080p projector hooked up in my living room, letting me play games and watch movies on a screen larger than anything you can buy on a typical display. It's awesome! Unfortunately, 4K projectors aren't affordable—right now, the cheapest option is $8,000—which means I'm stuck with 1080p for, most likely, the next few years. Thanks to downsampling, though, where a 4K image is scaled down to a nicer-looking 1080p image, I can get some benefits from our 4K future.

Despite my resolution-limited projector, I'm likely to prefer downloading the 4K version of whatever games I'm playing on my Xbox One X. That means wrestling with my bandwidth cap. As it stands, Forza Motorsport 7 alone would account for 10% (!!) of my cap for October. Even if Xbox One X is the first console to embrace 4K to this degree, it's clear where gaming is headed: higher resolutions. We may balk at a 100GB download in June 2017, but a year from now, it may well be standard.

And while I buy a few games in boxed form, it's few and far between. As with the file sizes of digital games, my downloads are only going to increase in the future. Comcast has boxed me in. I'm allowed to exceed 1TB in downloads twice per year, but after, it's $50 per monthly infraction. Once everything—video games, movies, streaming TV—have gone 4K, what once seemed like plenty of extra bandwidth is going to put Comcast in a position to squeeze more money out of people. "Oh, you need 1.5TB? That'd only $10 more a month! With a bundle, it's half."

God dammit.

That's the insidious part of making the current cap being 1TB, which sounds large. Sure, most people don't hit anywhere near 1TB right now, and it's possible your parents might not ever, but younger, media-savvy consumers? This shouldn't give Microsoft, or other companies pushing technological envelope, pause. But let's not pretend it won't be a problem. That trouble is coming sooner, not later.

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