Game developers are in a perpetual arms race, competing to release the most technically adept and visually stunning adventures for their fans to devour. Gamers’ desire for more immersive, more epic, more spectacular experiences naturally leads to games that feature…more. But bigger games mean bigger file sizes, and especially for console owners, this presents logistical issues. Internal storage is at a premium, with even the most generous current-gen internal storage drives looking small compared to the size of the triple-A game releases this year.

Did console developers Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo anticipate just how rapidly game file size would explode within their consoles’ lifetimes and the onus this would put on gamers to come up with their own storage solutions? Did computer manufacturers building gaming machines anticipate the extent to which current games would require both superlative storage and speed?