Genshin Impact’s Xbox Release Follows One Unfortunate Trend

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home November 20, 2024 8 Views 7 Min Read
Genshin Impact’s Xbox Release Follows One Unfortunate Trend



If there’s one game that needs no introduction, it’s Genshin Impact. HoYoverse’s free-to-play action RPG took the gaming world by storm when it made its debut in September 2020. Despite some mixed pre-release reception, it ended up generating a shocking $3.8 billion in revenue by the end of 2022, making it the most successful first year on the market for any game ever made. What made Genshin Impact‘s launch even more impressive, though, was that it accomplished that when it wasn’t playable on all platforms. When the game initially came out, it was only playable on PlayStation 4, iOS, Android, and Windows PCs, with no Xbox and Switch versions available.




More than four years later, however, Genshin Impact is finally coming to Xbox consoles. During Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024, HoYoverse announced that the hit gacha game would make its way to Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass on November 20, 2024. Considering that the Chinese developer had never released a game on a Microsoft console before, this was a pretty big deal. Genshin Impact will likely attract a big audience on Xbox Series X/S, but its surprisingly large file size on the platform may discourage some people from downloading it. Games with high storage space requirements have become a pretty common occurrence on Xbox over the last few years, and Genshin Impact is sadly continuing this trend.

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Genshin Impact’s Xbox Release Should Open the Floodgates

While Genshin Impact’s release on Xbox is a big deal on its own, it should only be the beginning of a major shift for the genre on Xbox platforms.

Genshin Impact Has a Very High File Size on Xbox Consoles


Genshin Impact’s 100 GB Storage Space Requirement is Larger than Other HoYoverse Games

Genshin Impact may be a free-to-play title, but it is filled to the brim with content. In fact, according to HowLongToBeat, it takes players around 676 hours to complete everything in the game, at least when playing solo. Taking this into account, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Genshin Impact has some fairly hefty storage space requirements. On mobile phones, the game can take up to 31 GB of space. Meanwhile, on PC, PlayStation, and now Xbox, it has a file size of more than 100 GB. Since Genshin Impact is a constantly-evolving game, it’s likely that its storage space requirements will become even higher in the future.

Other HoYoverse games have large file sizes as well, but compared to Genshin Impact, they’re far smaller. Honkai: Star Rail, for instance, takes up about 14 to 18 GB on iOS/Android, and 30+ GB on PC and PS5. Zenless Zone Zero, on the other hand, has a 55-57 GB storage space requirement on PC and PlayStation, but is only 20 GB on Android devices. The iOS version of the game is slightly larger than its Android counterpart, as it requires around 26 GB of space. Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero are most likely smaller than Genshin Impact due to them being relatively new releases, but it doesn’t change the fact that GI‘s file size is a hard pill to swallow.


Several Recent Xbox Games Have Had Unusually High File Sizes

Although Genshin Impact‘s storage space requirement is really high on Xbox consoles, there are some other games that have even larger download sizes. The upcoming Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has a 146 GB file size on Xbox Series X/S, while the recent Xbox port of Final Fantasy 14 requires more than 106 GB of storage. Additionally, there are a couple of titles that have bigger download sizes on Xbox consoles than any other platform. Take, for example, the recent Assassin’s Creed Syndicate 60 FPS update. On Xbox Series X/S, it requires roughly 31.8 GB of space, but on PS5, it only has a size of 0.75 GB.

It’s not exactly clear why some of these games have such high storage requirements on Xbox consoles, but regardless, they’re likely to frustrate a lot of players on the platform. Approximately 50% of all current-gen Xbox owners in the US have a Series S. Since the Xbox Series S is an all-digital console and has limited internal storage compared to the Xbox Series X (at least in the case of its 512 GB launch model), downloading a 100 GB game like Genshin Impact will be a hassle for most players on the system.


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