A leaked image of Skyrim being installed on the Xbox 360 has revealed that the game will take up a miniscule 3.8 GB of space on your harddrive.

This comes shortly after it was revealed that the Skyrim install on PC would only take up 6 GB of space. The install size is shockingly small for a game as massive as Skyrim, but the VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda Pete Hines has continue to defend that "content doesn't take lots more space if you know how to build an open world game, which we do."

Pete Hines has attributed the small install size to Skyrim being "more optimized than we've ever had before. And faster." According to Pete, the better optimization is a result of a "new engine & we're much better at compression (art/voice/data)."

Despite how much Pete Hines tries to reason with fans worrying how such a massive game can fit on a small install, I won't be complaining. As Pete Hines recalls about the install size of the previous Elder Scrolls, "Oblivion was, what, 4.something? Did it have more content than these games being mentioned that have 2x or 3x the install?"

Of course, that was the install size for PC. So the PC install of Skyrim is about 2 GB larger. Given the leaps Skyrim took in graphical advancement over Oblivion, I can understand why fans are worried.

Granted, Skyrim on the consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3, are going to be scaled back a bit, and probably more compressed. Still, the fact that Bethesda has managed to fit such a massive, amazing looking game in 3.8 GB on the Xbox 360 is a testament to their skills. It's quite impressive that Bethesda has managed to fit a game that takes 560 pages worth of a strategy guide and compresses it to 3.8 GB.