A new report from analytics firm ABI Research has revealed that the global average file size for iOS games has increased 42 percent in just six months, meaning developers will have to compete even more for hard drive space as games get larger and iOS devices start filling up.
According to the report, the average size for a game on iOS was 60MB in September, up from roughly 42MB in March 2012. By comparison, other apps have also grown in size, but to a lesser extent. The average iOS app is 23MB, up 16 percent over that same period.
ABI noted that iOS apps saw a particular jump in size in March after Apple increased the cellular download limit for apps from 20MB to 50MB. That more lenient restriction has given developers more freedom to make their games more complex across the board.
The only problem is that games are getting larger, but hard drives on iOS devices aren't. If this trend continues, users might start deleting their older apps to make room for new ones, so developers will need to find ways to make sure that players keep their games installed.
Until iOS devices begin to offer more storage, mobile developers might want to consider limiting their file sizes to make sure that their app can fit on even the most crowded hard drive.
The biggest problem with the size thing happened with the launch of the iPad and now the iPhone 5. Universal Apps are now sometimes double the size they used to be because they include support for the higher resolution devices even if you don't have it installed on one of the devices that would benefit from it.
