Today we have some interesting information to share with you about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate from CEDEC 2019.

A few weeks ago, we talked about the challenges developers at Bandai Namco faced in compressing the game’s file size from 60GB to 15GB. Now more information has been revealed about their efforts as translated by NintendoSoup.

First, during the game’s development, developers had to analyze various stats for balancing purposes. This was done by building an excel sheet with tons of data. In order to generate that super large excel sheet, it took 13 hours on a normal work computer with SSD and a single core. In order to reduce the time needed, the developers switched over to a SSD, core, and asset cache combination on a high performance PC. This reduced the time required to 40 minutes:

SSD + Single Core (Normal Working Computer): 13 hours

SSD + Single Core (High Performance Computer): 10 hours

SSD + Core (Normal Working Computer): 4 hours

SSD + Core (High Performance Computer): 2.5 hours

SSD + Core + Asset Cache (Normal Working Computer): 1.5 hours

SSD + Core + Asset Cache (High Performance Computer): 40 minutes

Next, the developers gave a breakdown of what’s inside the 15GB Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ROM. Fighter assets took up the most space at 5GB, followed by stage assets at 3GB, user interface assets at 2GB, voice data at 1GB, background music at 1.2GB, videos at 1GB, and finally 1.5GB for other data:

This chart shows how Bandai Namco successfully compressed the game from 60GB to 15GB. You can see the chart below:

RAW data (original): around 61.5GB (42GB resource, 17.6GB BGM, 1.5GB others)

ROM size during development: around 21.5GB (14.6GB resource, 5GB BGM, 1.5GB others)

Final ROM size: around 15GB (11.2GB resource, 1.2GB BGM, 1.5GB others)

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks, Brandon.