Why the PC version of Titanfall is a 48GB install

Those of you who have downloaded the PC version of Titanfall already might have noticed it's a hefty install: just shy of 49GB. By comparison, the Xbox One version, due out in the UK this Friday, weighs in at roughly 17GB.

Why? It's to do with the audio, developer Respawn has explained to Eurogamer.

To play Titanfall on PC you have to install a whopping 35GB of uncompressed audio, which isn't something we're used to with games.

Respawn lead engineer Richard Baker told Eurogamer this was to do with the developer engineering the game's data to work with less capable machines. In short, Titanfall reserves a decent proportion of CPU time for audio decode. By having uncompressed audio, the game runs faster for those using slower systems.

This is not an issue for the Xbox One version because the console has audio decode built into the hardware.

"Yeah, basically when you download the game or the disc itself, it's a lot smaller than that," Baker replied when asked about the PC version's 48GB install.

"We have audio we either download or install from the disc, then we uncompress it. We probably could have had audio decompress off disc but we were a little worried about min spec and the fact that a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio.

"So... it's almost all audio... On a higher PC it wouldn't be an issue. On a medium or moderate PC, it wouldn't be an issue, it's that on a two-core [machine] with where our min spec is, we couldn't dedicate those resources to audio."

Titanfall's minimum specs are extremely light. They are as follows:

• OS: Windows Vista SP2 64-bit / Windows 7 SP1 64-bit / Windows 8 64-bit
• CPU: AMD Athlon X2 2.8GHz / Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
• RAM: At least 4 GB
• HARD DRIVE: At least 50GB of free space
• VIDEO: AMD Radeon HD 4770 with 512MB RAM or better / Nvidia GeForce 8800GT with 512MB RAM or better
• DirectX: DirectX 11
• INPUT: Keyboard and mouse, Microsoft Gamepad
• ONLINE CONNECTION REQUIREMENTS: 512kbps down and 384kbps up or faster Internet connection

So there you have it.

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