RAGE Requires 25GB of HDD, 3 Discs for Xbox 360

RAGE will require 25 GB of HDD space on a PC, and 8 GB of HDD space on the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version will arrive in three discs.

If you've already missed it, Bethesda said back on September 16 that id Software's new shooter, RAGE, has officially Gone Gold and will arrive on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC here in the States on October 4, followed by a European release on October 7.

Saturday during the Eurogamer Expo, Digital Foundry talked with id Software creative director Tim Willits about the studio's new shooter, the technology behind it, and its ability to offer the same experience across all three platforms. But during the interview, he also revealed what PC and console gamers need to expect in terms of physical media and hard drive storage requirements. In short, it's going to be massive.

What we already know is that the PC version will require 25 GB of HDD space. And according to Willits, the PlayStation 3 version will require an 8 GB install which will contain all the textures at their highest level. "What is nice about the PS3 platform is that it's just one platform," he said. "Everyone has one Blu-ray drive, one hard drive, it's all the same. Some of the other systems you have... should I install it on my 360? Should I not install it? So yes, it's very nice."

As for the Xbox 360, id Software crammed the game onto three discs. "We recommend installing the game to the hard drive, but you don't need to install all three discs," he added. "If you don't have the space available on your hard drive, don't stress. Install the first disc, the first chapter, the first half of the game, then when you're done, uninstall and install disc two."

The third disc will focus on the multiplayer portion, but there's no need to install the content if users are really tight on disc space, he said.

For previous shooters, the studio focused on the PC platform and ported their games to the consoles afterward. That's not the case with id Tech 5 which was built from the ground-up supporting all three platforms. That said, there will be a consistent experience across the board, and if any problems pop up after the release, they'll likely appear on all three.

"[A PC focus] never worked out well for us [in the past] to be honest," he said. "Right from the get-go, John and his group of programmers - I call them the Big Brain Group - they looked at the three systems. There are more similarities between them than most people realize, so they developed a codebase that would take care of these multi-core systems."

"It makes a lot more sense than taking on old technology and shoving it into a modern day console and then having to multi-thread," he added. "So the basic gamecode is the same, the basic engine is the same and it's only the graphical APIs, and a few sound things that are really different on all the three systems, which is really nice. If we have an optimisation on the 360 for instance, it automatically optimises it also for PS3 and PC. Because we started on the engine from scratch it allowed us to more easily develop cross-platform technology."

To read the full 3-page interview, head here.