Distribution Size - What would you do?

[dxgame]

7.6 meg with all media including about 9 min of MP3 Music.

1.2 Meg without the mp3 music.

I'm stuck using mp3 so no need to talk about other music formats. :rolleyes:

Is 8 meg too big for a casual shoot-em-up game? If I go with midi based music the distribution would come in under 2 meg and I REALLY like that alot. A quick download for all. ;)

Sure I could have 2 versions, but first impressions are everything. :confused:

[DanMarshall]

7.6 meg is, what? About 30 seconds download these days? Unless you're on dialup, obviously.

I'm on dialup, so wouldn't download it. But then, I don't generally download anything above about 600k unless it's a special occasion.

Maybe release your 7.6 meg version as your download, but offer up the 1.3 Mb one for dialup users. Just a thought.

d

[Bmc]

that is fine, I believe average size of casual games nowadays is around 10mb so you're well below average size

[PeterM]

How come you're stuck with mp3?

[jankoM]

If you have separate demo and full versions you could somehow put just 1/3 of the music in demo and you get additional up-sell point "full music tracks"

[svero]

9 minutes of music sounds on the longish side. If I wanted to cut the filesize down, I'd probably cut down the length of the audio tracks. That being said.. 7.6 aint too bad by today's standards so it's not clear you really need to cut the file size down.

[ggambett]

Include less minutes of music or tune the parameters of the MP3 encoder. At least with OGG which is similar, lowering the quality a bit often halves file size from the "default" encoding.

[Mike Boeh]

7.6 megs is nothing! I am just trying to keep my games below 20 megs now-a-days...

[Artinum]

I concur. As a Bytten reviewer I have downloaded a lot of demos and can say that around 10Mb is pretty standard for a small game. You have nothing to worry about.

If you *really* want to trim it back, cut out a few music tracks (say 2 or 3). You may find a demo of under 5Mb puts off some people (size isn't everything, but it has some impact).

[Thorbrian]

Is 8 meg too big for a casual shoot-em-up game? the distribution would come in under 2 meg and I REALLY like that alot. A quick download for all. ;)
8 MB is definitely most assuredly not "too big" - I've never seen any data that suggests you'd be crippling your chances of success by going to 8MB, or even much bigger. Game quality is, by all accounts a much more significant measure than download size, hands down.

... that being said though, the difference between 1.2MB and 7.6MB is huge to dial-up users. Assuming there was no quality difference at all between the 2 cases, I would say it's quite reasonable to expect a 14% increase in total sales due to the reduced size. I don't know how one could know if the quality impact for losing the music makes up for that or not, except maybe through testing and monitoring. I think Dan Marshall's idea of offering both is a good one (you could see what users pick, then, and even track sales for both)

--
If you're curious how I came upon the 14% thing, I'm basing it on the data posted in this forum thread:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7024

[Arkadesh]

If I go with midi based music the distribution would come in under 2 meg and I REALLY like that alot. A quick download for all. ;)


Don't forget there are also mod formats that allow you to create quality music without the size-cost of mp3.

cheers,
Arkadesh

[dxgame]

"Don't forget there are also mod formats that allow you to create quality music..."

Up until 5 or so hours ago my engine kernal couldn't play mod/xm files. Thanks to Bass, now it can. WOW!!!!!!!! Problem solved.

I'll be able to have a TON of digital music now, with the download not even pushing 3 meg. This is very good, VERY GOOD!!!! :) :) :)

Thanks for all the comments.