Downloading Fallout 3 on the Xbox app

and people wonder why steam is the dominant gaming platform
well maybe it wouldn't be if everyone else stopped hacking their own legs off?

Not sure anyone will find this interesting in the slightest, but in Steam as a developer you configure your game as multiple packages they call Depots. You'd have a base package everyone gets, and then other packages which download on top of that for variations. Language is one of the possible variations, and whoever configured steam for Fallout 3 kindly separated them out, presumably because the audio files are quite large and most players will only ever hear one set of them.
Regional differences are also handled this way, often something like a blood texture will be modified for certain regions, and there may also be a Germany specific depot with Nazi symbols modified. Depending on your Steam settings, and where you are in the world, you end up downloading some combination of depots that combine to make one out of potentially dozens of variations of that game.
I don't know if the Xbox app provides the same functionality, but if so it would be a completely different implementation from Steam and the person who set it up either couldn't or couldn't be bothered.
The Steamworks documentation is public for anyone who likes that sort of thing: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/depots
- I knew they were depots, but not that they were layered like that, that's interesting.
  Here's another fact that you might find interesting: when Witcher 2 released, it was about 12GB IIRC, but the entire game was in only a few files because the bulk of all assets were in one large file. Makes things really easy to manage and package up, but Steam didn't have the ability to patch files, it had to be a full file replacement. So when the first update came out, everyone lost their minds at a 10GB update. Yeah, we don't bat an eye now at updates that are this big, but back then people were on slow connections, even dial up or DSL < 3mbps.
  It was from this that Valve decided to work on Steam's ability to incrementally patch individual files. The next Witcher 2 update was < 100MB.
- I certainly found this interesting. Thank you for sharing 😊

I may be shit at programming but it's good to know I'm better than a company worth $3,000,000,000 😎
- Anyone who's used MS Teams can relate.
- Your bandwidth and HDD space doesn't matter to Microsoft, but fixing this requires developers that cost money.
  Always remember PROFITS come first.

Hey that's better than my experience with that app. For me it worked fine exactly once. Then it's been a festival of frowny faces and generic error messages, because clearly that is better than telling the user what the issue is.
I managed to install fallout 76 once (of course it was free, you think I'd pay to play that game on that god forsaken platform ?). It didn't work because... I had the audacity of installing the game on a different drive than the OS, in the year of our lord 2023. The bug is specific to the Xbox app too... And neither Bethesda nor Microsoft care about it. I'm 99% sure it's still present to this day but I sure as hell won't install that terrible software to verify it.
- I had basically the same experience. I could download a 100gb game but not finish installation, just a shitty error code, support was trash too asking me to change my default windows program install location.
  Did you notice that when you install games from the Xbox app on a drive, it makes special folders that you can't delete? It installs them with TrustedInstaller, and that means that the administrator isn't allowed to delete them! You have to open up the folders and change the owner back to a user, then give that user permission to delete the fucking folder. Bullshit insidious software that I won't use anymore.

I don't know if that's hilarious or insane. Either way it's fucking stupid.
- I don't know if that's hilarious or insane
  Both.

Downloads are also absurdly slow on the Xbox app compared to steam. Downloading multiple times as much doesn't help either.
- I always noticed that on the PS4 as well, and never really tried to delve into why, or why it would go significantly faster (but nowhere near as fast as my PC) if the system was in rest mode, as opposed to just sitting watching the download happen on screen.
  
  Yeah Steam has pretty good server infrastructure while Sony’s sucks ass, and yet Sony is the one who charges for most other online features lmao

Wtf....
- This is what happens when you have the option to integrate i18n and never do it because the higher ups are morons and you're tasked something else

Its that 30% vibe code.

I didn't know it was on the Xbox App for PC now. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have cross-save with Xbox console.
- It does have cross save to PC and XBOX. I used cross save for Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance and I'm currently using it for Oblivion Remaster.
  I'm not sure if there is a list out there for which games support it, but it's absolutely supported for some.