Put a Data Cap in Your Ass

I don't know how much this matters because next to nobody reads this shit anyway, but can the game industry stop with the demand for massive downloads already? Somehow, people are wondering why Google Stadia- the service which forces you to stream games from a server hundreds of miles away- is plummeting to its demise, when it's clear that this country's internet can't even handle the demands of ordinary game consoles. 

Google Stadia.
(image from News4JAX)

Let me give you an example. Every time I turn on my Playstation 4, it insists on a time-consuming system update, or a game update, which explains why I haven't been turning on my Playstation 4 much lately. Oh, Dan Hibiki is finally available in Street Fighter V? That's fantastic! I'll go buy the character right... no, I guess I have to sit through a 27GB download first. That's ten hours of twiddling my thumbs waiting, instead of spinning them on the D-pad where they should be. 

He. Doesn't. Seem. To Have. A Problem. With.
Waiting. Maybe. I. Should Just. Be. Patient.
(image from the Disney Fandom Wiki)
(Did you know those Fandom guys just bought
out Fanatical, the company that sells Steam keys
at budget prices? Kind of surprised me.)

Remind me again how large Street Fighter V: Champion Edition was? 45GB, you say? Why am I downloading a file that's over half the size of the full game, when I've already downloaded the update that transformed it into the Champion Edition months ago? In fact, why did I have to re-download the whole damned thing from scratch last year, when I switched from a physical copy to a digital one? It's written to the hard drive one way or the other... the only thing that disc is good for is proof of ownership. 

All this downloading and re-downloading and re-re-downloading is wasted bandwidth, which is inconvenient for those of us slow internet speeds (read: every American who doesn't live in a city) and downright expensive for everyone with data caps. If the player is limited to 100GB of data a month by their ISP, they've just wasted a quarter of their allotment downloading a game THAT'S ALREADY ON THEIR HARD DRIVE! Can't you consolidate things a little? Is it really necessary to make an update with only minor revisions to the core gameplay HALF THE SIZE of the original file?! (Hint: No it's not, if you put in some effort.)

Not even kidding about this! If anything,
I undersold the size of this update!

We're at a point where the Xbox One that was originally envisioned as encumbered with DRM and a mandated internet connection is somehow less of a hassle to use online than the Playstation 4, which was originally promoted with this video. The restrictions Don Mattrick wanted to burden the Xbox One with in 2013 are history, yet the constant demands for downloads on the Playstation 4 remain an aggravating reality. 

Maybe they should have showed the part in the video where the Sony chairman had to wait through a bunch of system and game updates before he could play the disc he was handed in a couple of seconds. Remind me, can you post ten hour videos on YouTube?