PlayStation 4’s and Xbox One’s first full year on the market saw blockbuster games, indie titles, lifestyle apps and more, all of which rapidly filled up hard drive space.

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“ It looks like we are doomed to a life of micromanaging our data

With new-generation games occupying increasingly larger amounts of storage than we’ve been used to, the stock 500 GB hard drive inside the new consoles diminishes in space rather sneakily after installing a few full release games, downloadable content packs, and patches. The accessible tools given to players to easily record and share their own gameplay also contributes to the storage issue, especially if it’s something a player revels in.The small hard drive is a short-sighted restriction, as it isn’t even enough to cope with the content appetite of the average gamer across one year. Although there are a few solutions to mitigate the problem, such as storing save files on the cloud and taking advantage of external drives , micromanagement shouldn't be part of the Xbox One and PS4 experience that both companies spent so much energy on marketing. We need to start seeing more console options with larger capacities to support the average gamer’s content consumption.As scores of consumers secure consoles over the recent holiday periods, let’s take a look at how many games from the past year users can expect to fit onto their stock consoles before they have to resort to micromanaging storage. We drew from various samples across different genres to calculate how much space games take up on average. We did the same for indie games, DLC and entertainment applications.Retail and digital games occupy the same amount of hard drive space. And a cache from an install will remain on PS4 system until users decide to delete it. Sony’s console packs a 500 GB internal hard drive with 93 GB of storage set aside for the OS. The remaining 407 GB is designated user storage for applications, capture gallery, application saved data and themes.Based on averages, PS4 users can expect to fit can expect to fit 13 full release games on their consoles. Alternatively, players can fit 12 full release games and a generous DLC pack for each title. For those who like to use their consoles for a range of uses, they’ll be able to cram in 12 full titles, 5 DLC packs, 5 indie games, 12 entertainment apps and a total of 15:42 minutes in gameplay clips. This leaves just a little over 1 GB free for a small indie game, a slight DLC pack, apps, and/or gameplay footage.The stock Xbox One also features a 500 GB hard drive that can quickly drain of space , not due to the vast amount of content it can slowly accumulate, but because a relatively small 362 GB of storage reserved for users. The remaining space is for its multiple operating systems and other system functions. This number, however, is for the stock console that came with the Kinect.Based on averages, Xbox One users can expect to fit can expect to fit 11 full release games and 4 large DLC packs on their consoles or 10 full release games with 16 hefty DLC packs. All-round gamers will able to cram in 10.5 full titles, 5 DLC packs, 5 indie games, approximately 12 entertainment apps and a total of 15:42 minutes in gameplay clips. This leaves approximately 2 GB free for a light indie game, slim DLC, apps and/or gameplay footage.The game sizes used in our sample are sourced from PSN, Xbox Live Marketplace, and our own installations. The figures listed by both companies on their respective stores are smaller to what you can expect once you install the game and actually play it, due to patches and other data. For example, Destiny's actual game size is 22.17 GB installed on PS4 and its listed is as 17.4 GB online, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare increases to 43.25 GB up from 37.9 GB. Obviously, there will also be a fluctuation of these figures from user to user and console to console.Capping at a maximum of 13 titles for this generation is an issue as scores of full release games have been released in this generation’s lifetime. Space was a niggling issue with players last generation that’s only getting worse for the current cycle as mandatory installs and patches balloon with the general increase in video game fidelity. File save data sizes (different to install sizes), while currently negligible in size, are also doubling along with an growing helft in patch install sizes.With players getting blindsided by installing as-quoted-innocently-sized games and not truly expecting them to grow some spare tires is a great example of why 500 GB HD simply isn’t enough for the average gamer.Looking towards the future, it’s obvious that game install sizes will keep increasing over the new-gen lifetime, exacerbating the problem. For example, the newer Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s 43.25 GB bulk on PS4 is a noticeable 39 percent inflation over Call of Duty: Ghosts’ 31.1 GB. Likewise, Assassin's Creed Unity's 38.2 GB is a whopping 63 percent bump over Black Flag's 23.4 GB.Just by eyeing the trend of increasing install sizes of blockbuster franchises, both companies need to start offering consoles with at least 1 TB on the market to keep up with the demand. Even that's too snug, a 2 TB machine would be a good start as we head towards a digital only landscape. For current users of 500 GB consoles, it looks like we are doomed to a life of micromanaging our data with cloud saves, smaller-capacity external drives or resorting to digging up hacks on how to expand our stock consoles storage to 1 TB. If you want to try upgrading your console's storage capacity for yourself, here's how to do it on Xbox One and Playstation 4

Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter