PlayStation 3 owners planning to pick up Shift 2: Unleashed next week should clear out some room on their hard drives first. The PS3 version of EA’s track racer requires a mandatory installation before you can play, and it is not a small one. According to Gamepur, which first reported the figure, the install comes in at almost 4.5GB and takes more than six minutes to complete, details since picked up by GamingBolt and other outlets this weekend.
A 4.5GB Install And A Six Minute Wait
Six minutes is hardly an eternity, but it is time spent staring at a progress bar when you would rather be on the grid, and 4.5GB is a meaningful chunk of space for anyone still running one of the smaller early PS3 models. Owners of 40GB consoles in particular, who may already be juggling demos, game installs and downloaded content, could find themselves doing some housekeeping before the first race.
Mandatory installs have been part of life on the PS3 for several years now. Because every PS3 ships with a hard drive, developers can count on that space being there, and installing data to the drive is a common way to work around the slower read speeds of Blu ray discs. Xbox 360 owners generally get the option of installing games to their hard drive rather than being required to, partly because not every model of Microsoft’s console includes one.
Slightly Mad Studios Returns With A Helmet Cam
Shift 2: Unleashed is the follow up to 2009’s Need for Speed: Shift and is once again developed by Slightly Mad Studios. Like its predecessor, it leans toward the simulation end of the racing spectrum rather than the arcade thrills of last year’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. The headline feature is a new helmet camera that puts players inside the driver’s head, with the view shifting and looking toward the apex of corners as the driver would. Night racing is also part of the package, and the game brings over Autolog, the social feature from Hot Pursuit that tracks friends’ times and pushes you to beat them.
The game is due in North America on March 29 and in the UK on April 1, on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. For PS3 players, the install is the price of admission, and it seems a reasonable trade if it helps keep load times down between events, though we will reserve judgment on that until we have played the final release.
If you are on a launch era console with limited storage, now might be a good weekend to clear out a few old demos. Let us know in the comments whether mandatory installs still bother you, or whether you have long since made your peace with them.