UPDATE: Well, Sony's getting smarter, it looks like. Now you can download a small installer, and it will take care of installing the game for you. All that deleting for nothing. Still, 27 GB is pretty big. Original post follows.

The only video game store in my town closed down a few months ago, and so it's too inconvenient to just hop by a video game store outside of town and buy some disc games, specifically The Last of Us before it launches in a couple of hours. So I bought the digital version and am awaiting for the game to unlock in just over an hour. My 120 GB hard drive, however, was completely full, and since the game requires a ridiculous 54 GB of free space for installation, I had to go through a huge purge. I've deleted a bunch of games installed and several game data that are required to "decrease loading times" in these days. Of course, when all is said and done my PS3 will have 27 GB of free space, since the install process is extremely inefficient. This will hopefully be the last time I have to do this before new consoles arrive.

You guys have probably done this once or more by now. Are you guys attempting to make space for The Last of Us as well? What are your stories of some epic purging to get some new games or data on your preciously small hard drive?

This is the first time I've had to actually purge some to make room, but I'm in the same spot as you. I almost wish I hadn't bought the Season Pass so that when I'm done with this I could just flush it and bring back a greater variety. Getting this and MGS4's install off my system will cause a greater sigh of relief than anything for me.

54GB?! What the hell?

Already did :)

Holy hell? That's lot of memory.

Oh phew. When I read the title I thought that was the install data off the disk, haha. But it's time like this I'm glad I upgraded my hard drive in my PS3 when I could. Put in a decent 500Gig HDD in there and now I never need to worry about space. Good luck to everyone purging install data!

My goodness, 54GB? I have a 60GB launch unit. Thank goodness I pre-ordered the special edition, because otherwise I don't think there'd be any way I could purge my system enough for such a mammoth.

If only we lived in an all-digital future!

It says on the PSN store page that it's 27gb to install though. If it really is 54gb then I definitely don't have enough space for that.

Wow, no store near by? That kinda sucks. I think there are like 15 within 10 miles of me and thats just EB/GS. Not to imply that, that is a good thing :-/ Its kinda ridiculous. PS3 must use a shit ton of uncompressed data. That is a insane size for any game. Wonder what the install is with a disc. I only have the 60 GB model.

I was totally going to download the game.

I'll pick it up at Gamestop tomorrow :)

Uncharted 3 required what, 80 gigs, because of PS3's terrible method of installation.(You need space for the download, and the equally sized install) This is actually a significant improvement compared to that.

@redbullet685: Installing any downloaded content from the PlayStation Store requires an extra copy of said content for installation, which is really fucking stupid in hindsight now that you've got games the size of a Blu-ray disc available for download.

Playstation 3 games require 2X the size of the game to install. The rest would be freed up after install, but that's the amount of space needed to complete the process.

Apparently Guardians of Middle Earth requires 75 GB. WTF is up with that?

@andrewb: @gruebacca: I had not known that but that is insane. I couldn't imagine downloading 54 gb of a single game on the terribly slow PSN download speeds.

So people with 40 gig PS3s are just fucked? And what if they buy the game? If it only says 27GB on the store, that's fucked. Good thing this won't be a problem on PS4 at least.

Wait, what?!? My slim got trashed by lightning so I've had to fall back to my Japanese system which is only 40 gigs. Are you fucking telling me I can't play it?

I just bought a ps3 for this game, and for beyond later in the year, and boy installing these free ps plus games is insane... took almost 2 days to install infamous 2 and like 2 other games... NUTS... how is this not a more compained about thing lol, it's really really insane.

On the 360 install times take a bit, but only when installing off the disc and it usually only would take 20-30mins at the outside really. Digital games on the 360 didn't install.. cause THAT'S STUPID... it just downloads then works instantly after like 5 secs for the console to understand taht the download completed and all that (sorting the data into lists and that sorts of things most likely).

So I guess I look forward to another lengthy install for Last of Us, I hope I can at least start the DL tonight at midnight? It's unclear if it unlocks at 12am June 14th or not, wish I could have preloaded it at least. Steam sometimes takes a bit, and actualy uses a nuts about of my pc's resources, to decode once a preloaded game is unlocked on release day but still never took more than 20mins.

People have always complained about it. Stuff like that is why we want to have a monthly subscription so Sony can have better servers for that kind of stuff.

I apologize in advance but I have to say this: Holy shit!

54 GB! I imagine I sounded like Doc Brown when I said that. I'm glad I pre-ordered the physical copy because downloading it would quite literally take forever with my connection.

@turboman: The download speed has been fine for me grabbing these few free large psn games (xcom, uncharted 3, infamous 2) it's the install that takes hours and hours, literal hours :( It's just sort of suprised me that it takes this long and that I never fully knew about it before hand. Sure I didn't own a ps3 before, but I feel like if this was an issue since forever I'd have heard about it, it doesn't help that it seems like if you happen to download a game WHILE installing another it triples the slowness, and you can't seem to cancel or pause an install, you're locked on that screen till it finished (aka I left my ps3 installing infamous from 9pm till sometime in the evening the next day and I had to wait a few more hours after work for it to finish).

EDIT: Yay it's 12:03am right now, gunna check how toa ctually get this Last of Us download sorted out if it's up now.

EDIT: Nope... download on the psn store just downloads the static theme... that's super misleading! jerks lol.

@alkusanagi: Are PS3 consoles not region-free? I think you might be able to play the disc version of the game even on your japanese PS3. But maybe check some of your none japanese disc versions before you buy TLOU and see if it works.

It's not actually a 54GB download. Think of it as an installer. You're downloading an installer and then you need close to equal the space for the game proper afterward. The installer can then be deleted.

You also only need to download 50 percent of it to play the single player.

Now the download option is removed from the Last of Us page on the store :( Anyone have an idea how this day 1 digital stuff works I'm new to playstation stuff, is it normal for it to take 20-30mins to 'switch' over to released? Should I just chill for another 30mins or should I just fuckin' go to bed cause it will take a few hours? I wanna at least start the download if there's a chance it will be available when they said it would (15mins ago).

@andrewb: I just found that out on the Store. Will update post.

@castiel: It's region free. What's confusing me is the part about needing 50+ gigs to install it when the system itself is only 40 gigs. Is that only for the download version of the game? If I play it off disk I'd hope it would be significantly smaller.

At some point when HDDs were super cheap a few years ago, I threw 500GB into my PS3. Between this sort of thing and PlayStation Plus, it's really worked out. One of the first things I'll do when I get my PS4 is throw in as much storage as I can, it's a worthwhile investment.

Yah I got scared for a second too because I'm in the same boat with an old 60gb fatty. Then I realized this is probably in case you completely download the game and I'll be picking up a box copy instead. Probably the last game I'll ever put into that system, so might as well be a physical disc, for old times sake.

@alkusanagi: Naughty Dogs' games usually use streaming tech, so the disk install shouldn't be very much. I know UC3's install was tiny.

I think you should change the title.

The download size is pretty extreme. I bought off Psn to play it immediately and plan to buy a used copy down the road for significantly less. Then I can delete it off my hard drive.

ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME? So I have to delete everything to fit it into my 60GB PS3?!

Edit: Well 27GB is still plenty ridiculous. This only applies for the digital download version right? If I have the physical copy do you still need 27GB of free space?

@probablytuna: only for the digital. It streams mostly from the disk for the physical... Not sure how much it takes (my ps3 has a 500gb drive I put in when I maxed it out a few years ago, so I haven't really cared)

Phew, that's good news. Thanks!

Holy fuck that is one hugeass game

Really? Mine read 157 mb which shocked me. What the hell did I miss?

@marcsman: that's the installer

Oh crud so I have to start the game up then?

Glad that this is only for the digital download version. I'm still on a launch 60GB PS3 and I've been bumping into the memory limit a lot; any time I go to install a new game, from disk even, I have to delete something else. Definitely would not have been happy if I got the game in the mail today and they wanted a 27GB install from the disk. I figured their 'from disk' install would be pretty good considering their past releases, and it's looking like that was a safe bet to make here. Also, based on the general PSN download speeds I get, 27GB would take forever. I can get 4MB/s on Steam, but Persona 3 FES (which is only 4GB) took me about 4 hours to download on PS3.

Can you imagine the size on some of these next gen downloads? I guess we should all be thankful for the Xbox One and the non replaceable hard drive along with forced installs on every game. Digital...catch the wave!

And this is why I'm not convinced about a digital only future yet. If were getting 500 GB HDD's at standard in these new machines and games start eating up over 30GB on the regular due to higher textures and what not its going to get real crazy really quick.

That made me crack up. Thanks, @marokai.

In case anyone is still wondering, the disc version looks like it only requires 50MB, according to the back of the box:

http://www.gamefly.com/PopUp/View/LargeView/?src=http://cms.gameflycdn.com/proxy/gf/boxartback/480w/5004174.jpg

Nah, fuck that I rather buy it on disk.

That's almost all the space on my PS3 (which is 55GB).

I already had to upgrade my HDD (from 20GB) for all the PS+ stuff so I have plenty of room left. And the download "only" took 2 hours so I guess PSN is pretty decent in Europe.

This :-D. I put in a 250 or 500 gig, can't remember exactly.