When we was first reported that Forza Motorsport 7 would take up to 100GB of size to support 4K textures, it was met with disdain. Hard drive space has become a premium, and so are download speeds to cope with the rising game sizes.
But Microsoft might have something in the works to help rectify the issue of game size going higher by day, as reported by Digital Foundry.
Intelligent Delivery is the new system that could see coming to the Xbox One. Instead of downloading the whole game, Intelligent Delivery would allow assets be tagged into “chunks” that users can pick and choose to download. Three types of chunk tags were mentioned by Digital Foundry: 4K (for Xbox One X) or 1080p assets, language, and modes.
The idea is that users can pick what part of the content they want to be installed. Say, only install the English language and commentary in sports game rather than have all the other languages you would never use hog space, or skip the big 4K assets since you only game on a 1080p screen.
The mode chunks is also interesting, which suggest that you can install separate modes like single player and multiplayer. On the PS4 you can choose to download either the multiplayer or the single player mode first for digital downloads, but having the option to also install either one of these modes would be cool too.
This is not official news yet, but such a system would be very useful to have. Juggling through games when you only have the base 500GB hard drive in the launch PS4 and Xbox One is a time-consuming process, so having the flexibility of download sizes is a good step for consoles to have.