RAGE Has 3 Discs On Xbox 360 And An 8GB Download On PS3

For those of you who were not aware, RAGE is a huge game. With a much-hyped, state-of-the-art graphics engine and a large amount of single and multiplayer content, we all knew it would be massive. Now there is hard evidence of that rumored size with the announcement by id Software creative director Tim Willits that the Xbox version will come with three discs and the PS3 version will require an 8GB download.

Although it seemed that the creators wanted to try and minimize the outward appearance of size (i.e. inconvenience to gamers) by keeping the amount of discs and download size to a more user-friendly level, a game of this build has made that impossible.

Even with the large install size, Willits had high praise for the PS3 version because of the system’s ability to download the entire game onto the Blu-Ray drive.

“Sony was great,” Willits said. “Kudos to Sony for letting us do that. They don’t allow every game to do that. So definitely, hats off. What we were able to do is install all the textures to the highest level. What is nice about the PS3 platform is that it’s just one platform. Everyone has one Blu-ray drive, one hard drive, it’s all the same. Some of the other systems you have… should I install it on my 360? Should I not install it? So yes, it’s very nice.”

So unfortunately for 360 owners, without the 22GB needed to install the full game, most players will have to switch out discs during the experience, with the multiplayer disc being a stand-alone. Willits did mention that you can forgo the effort of switching discs by just installing and finishing the first half of the game from disc one, uninstalling it, then installing disc 2. He also said that you don’t really need to install the multiplayer disc if you’re really tight on hard disk space.

So basically all this means is that the game is SO big, that even though they wanted to keep from giving their fans a Final Fantasy-esque experience with multiple discs, they are just going to swallow the bitter pill and do what is necessary to give the players the experience they intended.

It would be nice to keep it on one disc, or one download, but this game is so ahead of the curve and jam packed with content that the multi-disc requirement always seemed inevitable. With the evolution of the last few cycles of games on the current gen systems, this situation was bound to start becoming more common. Battlefield 3 has also been confirmed as a two-disc game, so RAGE is not alone.  The latest games are just growing to big for the systems they are on.

So unless you are too lazy to stand up, walk to your xbox, and swap a disc, then this announcement should further validate that you will be getting your hands on an absolutely massive game when RAGE is released on October 4th.

We got a chance to go hands on with RAGE last month, so check out our thoughts while you’re here. A full review is also coming down the pipeline, to be posted early next week.