Uncompressed or minimally compressed high resolution textures is my hypothesis. Back in the PS2 era when most games could fit on a 4.7GB DVD, the highest resolution textures you’d get was 512x512. A total of 262 144 pixels. These days, highest resolution texture is probably 4096x4096. 16 777 216 total pixels. 64x more pixels. Modern textures also store more colour information. While image compression formats and algorithms have improved significantly in 20 years, there’s only so much that can be done without reducing image quality. No one wants to see compression artifacts on their giant 4k TV or 4K monitor inches from their face after spending a small fortune on a video game (fortnite is free to play, but you get the general idea).
Uncompressed or minimally compressed high resolution textures is my hypothesis. Back in the PS2 era when most games could fit on a 4.7GB DVD, the highest resolution textures you’d get was 512x512. A total of 262 144 pixels. These days, highest resolution texture is probably 4096x4096. 16 777 216 total pixels. 64x more pixels. Modern textures also store more colour information. While image compression formats and algorithms have improved significantly in 20 years, there’s only so much that can be done without reducing image quality. No one wants to see compression artifacts on their giant 4k TV or 4K monitor inches from their face after spending a small fortune on a video game (fortnite is free to play, but you get the general idea).
They make all their money from purely cosmetic microtransactions, so it’s probably even more relevant