Dear Game Developers...

[MKSheppard]

There's something known as a DVD. Virtually every computer today has a DVD drive.

Use it. I have no desire to swap 6 CDs during installs.

Thank you verymuch.

[Hotfoot]

Games are already starting to be released on multiple DVDs these days Shep. Give it another ten years, and games will be on 6-DVD sets or 1 HD/BR-DVD

[Edward Yee]

Unless media (disc) capacity's growth catches up with that of game installers, or the latter slows down to equilibrium... no offense, but without either, aren't we fucked regardless? (In the regard of the OP.)

[Admiral Drason]

I got a new PC last week and funny that you mention it, I was swearing up a storm while installing CD after CD. They only decided to have the five to six disc installs over the past three years. All of my games older than three years is about one or two discs long.

[Edward Yee]

What's the space taken up on each of those older games and the total (of all the discs per game), though, compared to the now?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

This issue made me glad that the Myst 10th anniversary set (first three games) used DVDs, otherwise it would have been ten CDs.

[Beowulf]

Data expands to consume all available space.

[Cao Cao]

Back in my day, we had to change floppies during gameplay every 10 minutes, and that's the way we liked it!

[Losonti Tokash]

Back in my day, we had to change floppies during gameplay every 10 minutes, and that's the way we liked it!

Yeah, until your asshole little brother reformatted one of them because the fucking game has a reformat option in the in-game menu(!?).

[2000AD]

There's something known as a DVD. Virtually every computer today has a DVD drive.

Use it. I have no desire to swap 6 CDs during installs.

Thank you verymuch.

Um, every game i've bought in the past year (probably longer), bar 1 which was small enough for 1 CD, has come on a DVD, or in the case of Medieval 2: Total War 2 DVDs

IS this just in Europe that it's happening?

[salm]

This indeed a European thing. Or at least American versions are often on multiple CDs.
I sometimes import games from the US abecause the German versions are for one synchronize really shitty and a lot of violence is censored out. (We often get green blood or no blood at all and crap like that.)

Anyway, for some reason these American games are often on a whole bunch of CDs while the German version simply has one DVD.

I´ve been wondering why they do that in America myself. I figured that DVD players are not that widely available in the States.

[Sikon]

I´ve been wondering why they do that in America myself. I figured that DVD players are not that widely available in the States.

Interesting question. However, there is no shortage of DVD players. Besides, the typical systems requirements of multi-gigabyte games are enough to ensure buyers have modern computers including DVD drives.

[Davis 51]

I´ve been wondering why they do that in America myself. I figured that DVD players are not that widely available in the States.

Not true. Pretty much every computer made in the last 4 years has one.

[Netko]

The story goes that when DVD came out, Americans mostly bought standalone players while Europeans got DVD-ROMS, and that the initial impetus affected configurations from then on (with Europe standardizing on DVD-ROMs/burners on everything but the cheapest computers much earlier).

There is no excuse for not releasing a DVD version today even if the above is not true. The price of optical drives tanked so hard in recent years that 20$ will probably get you a DVD burner these days so there really is no excuse.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

I've found many of my recent games on DVD (luckily, because some of them would have come on about a dozen or more CDs) in America.

[NRS Guardian]

For alot of games America offers an option between CD and DVD versions, though CD versions are becoming less common.

[White Haven]

The problem is that while games are often RELEASED in CD and DVD formats, the DVDs are vanishingly rare in actual real-world stores, ESPECIALLY at launch. Goddamn obnoxious to be waiting for a game, and have to buy it on CD because buyers apparently think that 3 letters is too long for a storage media acronym, or some such inane prattle.