Upon the release of Wings of the Goddess some were shocked at what they found on their game disc. Or more precisely they were surprised at how little was on the disc itself. The contents of the WotG CD totaled only 352 MB. Not much bigger than the size of downloading maybe one T.V. show. Over the span of several updates downloaded content has added around 143 MB resulting in a total of nearly 500 MB. If they're only going to wait to add the bulk of an expansions data with updates then what's the point? Why even bother producing discs at all?
It seems to me like the utility of a game disc is its sheer convenience to avoid download time. Consuming the most disc space by far are the zones, and the music. 332 of the entire 352 MB included on your WotG CD was nothing but the zones. Area files range from 1.5 MB to 15MB each, far larger than any other kind of data. 20 MB of music occupied much of the remaining space. Music files range from 1.2 to 4.5 MB per file. That's basically it, leaving little chunks for models, icons, and text etc. Providing all of this on a CD means players don't have to spend time downloading a giant 350 MB+ update.
On the other hand, there are some serious cons to using a game disc. Gaming today has seen increasing popularity for content that is purely digital such as the website Direct2Drive, and Steam. This makes things vastly cheaper and simpler. It frees the producer from having to manufacture a physical product, ship it, and has no unpredictable upsets (like hurricane Ivan delaying the release of Chains of Promathia). What's interesting is that Square-Enix has been exploring this aspect more and trending away from relying on physical game discs.
Add-on scenarios were introduced last year as FFXI's first foray into fully digital content for purchase. Recently the regular updates have become very large as well. The update from 6/09/08 contained ~120 MB of data while the update of 11/09/09 was split into two halves totaling 152 MB. Now a new trilogy of add-ons takes another step toward more significant downloadable content. For the first time the Abyssea series will contain new game areas. This may be an important milestone given that, as I discussed, area data has been cumbersomely large.
This could mean that the add-ons are more than just a means for cranking out content while Square feverishly tries to finish Final Fantasy XIV. The add-ons may also serve as a gradual test to find out how the download capacity of the average FFXI player has risen over the years. (I don't mean to imply that the Abyssea add-ons will be enormous or comparable to Wings but that at least they will probably be larger than the mission add-ons) The next logical question then would be; is it possible Square may be done with expansion discs for good? Perhaps a progression to a fully digital expansion could be a next step. This would make sense from a technological and a business standpoint at this point in FFXI's lifespan.
Broadband internet has become the norm since FFXI was first developed. I hope that Square may be seeing this and further develop increasingly significant download-only content. At least, to the extent that it can mean "heavier" development such as Abyssea, and not fluff like the mission scenarios.
