Here's what happens when you buy an Xbox One X. You unbox the thing and take it to your entertainment center. You then go to CVS to buy a new surge protector and wonder how it is you came to have so many power cords in your life, whether or not they're all essential, and whether or not human society can continue in this way. You then go home and plug in the power strip. You go through the setup, including a ~700 MB update download. And then you go into either your shelf or your "games and apps" section to see what you're going to play on your shiny new console. Then, you start downloading and realize that these are some massive files, even if you've got a disc. Before playing, my eyebrows raised at 103.12 GB file size for Gears of War 4.
HD textures don't come cheap, and it's not surprising to see such large numbers for these games, especially since many of them have their Xbox One X patches separate from the original files -- sizes might go down for games built from the ground up for the X. Still, we're looking at some colossal numbers here. Download-wise it isn't as big a problem as it might be, because Xbox Live tends to have quicker download speeds than PlayStation Network, but it still isn't great for those without particularly great networks or, even more to the point, aggressive data caps. Many Xfinity customers, for example, have a 1 TB monthly data cap, and throwing even one of these games on there could throw a wrench in that budget, especially if you're doing some 4K streaming as well.
But the real problem here is space. The Xbox One X comes with a 1 TB hard drive, with 780.9 of that free for storage once you've got pesky things like an operating system out of the way. That felt like a whole lot of real estate just a few days ago, but it's easy to imagine filling that thing up very quickly with games of this size. Not every game here is as big as Gears of War 4, but you'll still likely end up deleting some games a little ways into your time with the system. And since you'll need to download those massive files every time you want to play something that isn't on local storage, it significantly slows down the instant gratification that comes with having a nice broad gaming collection. An external hard drive starts to look more and more essential.
There's a bit of bias here: as a reporter with a ton of games, I'm naturally able to fill up this hard drive in no time at all. But I'd argue that a similar situation also applies to most people with an Xbox One X right now: remember, this is a system aimed at the enthusiast crowd, and those are people who are much more likely to have a lot of games. We saw a similar thing happen with the 500 GB Xbox Ones and PS4s when they both launched, something that can largely be solved with a 1 TB hard drive. It makes me hope for a 2 TB option for the Xbox One X at some point, because that's what we'll need to see a similar result.
