Why would this be the case? Games preloading has been a thing for many years. This isnt like an MMO launch that there is additional impact when the game is being played.
replySure GTA6 may be a slight uptick in the amount of data being downloaded like any new game being released, but I would wager that the amount of data they are normally pushing out for downloads just on a regular basis (wether new purchases, redownloading games, game pass, etc) is already quite high.
I don't think this is the case, even a little bit.
replyI want to believe that cause is that all the world's computing power is dedicated to calculating the incredibly large balance in my checking account but my desire is the only thing I can find to support that hypothesis.
replyAn estimated 2.6 million pre-orders for Xbox alone. 2.6 million people downloading 200+ GB is not nothing.
replyIf they roll it out evenly the week prior, then today (1/7th) is just 75 PB. To get that done in a single day would require a sustained 6.9 Tbps.
I'm sure this is all handled by a CDN at some level... but again it's not nothing.
It is basically nothing once you remember the cloud isn't one computer either. I want to say Azure was already millions of (beefy ass) severs over hundreds of datacenter locations organized into dozens of zones, and not all of those servers in each region are assigned to the same sets of services.
reply6.9 Tbps to get it done in a single day is even 3x less than the minimum on Steam in the last 48 hours https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/ and they don't even have GTA VI to distribute.