How do you organize your gaming files on your PC/PS4/XBO/SWITCH/WiiU?

[BrawlMan]

Now that the consoles have folders for games, how do you organize yours?

Me? On my PS4, I organize my games by genre or long running series I enjoy. For example, I have folder dedicated to Devil May Cry, Uncharted, and Resident Evil. The last exmaple used to be part of my survival horror folder, until I decided to give the Evil Within games their own folder. I also have a folder for fighting games, beat'em ups (2D & 3D with the biggest folder on my console), racing, and FPS.

I wish the organization options on Switch was better, as it does not have folders. It's weird, because the Wii U had folders you can organize your games. Why remove a good and basic feature. The only way to organize your Switch games on the console is by alphabet, how long you played the game, or by release date. That's it. Nintendo has still yet to make a folder update.

 

[votemarvel]

If given the option I sort them alphabetically.

 

[BrawlMan]

If given the option I sort them alphabetically.

I sort of do this with folders dedicated to game series, though it's more of case of numerical order. My brawler folder alphabetized, while my fighting game folder is organized by what I'm playing or enjoying more at the moment.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I don't do much to sort them. On Steam I have three folders, one for finished games, one for unfinished games and one for my most favorite games. On my Switch I just have them in order of most recently played. I don't really find the organization on my Switch to be a problem since either I'm looking for a specific game and so I can just search alphabetically and find it or I don't know what I want to play and so just browsing through the games works too. With Steam you just have this long list of names but the Switch having icons makes finding things pretty easy for me.

 

[bluegate]

I don't sort them on my PS4.

The PS4 sorts them automatically on last-played in the main UI and for games that don't fit in the UI I can just go to the library where they are ordered by alphabet.

I don't play a lot of games at the same time, so the PS4's main UI is sufficient for me. It rarely happens that I have to dip into the library to find a game.

 

[Yoshi178]

i pop the physical disc or cartridge i want to play in the system and then bob's your uncle.
screw digital.

 

[BrawlMan]

i pop the physical disc or cartridge i want to play in the system and then bob's your uncle.
screw digital.

None of that negative, distracting bullshit. This topic is meant for gaming organization of all types. Either stay on topic or don't bother posting. As much as I wish, not every game is going to get a physical release.

Got it? Good.

 

[SupahEwok]

I just let GoG or Steam install wherever they want. It's rare that I need to dig into the files. I don't have some sort of large archival storage drive and I own many more games digitally than I have storage space to hold, so I uninstall games as I finish them. Not a lot of point in storage organization for me.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I like them in a alphabetical list.

Plain boring text too, not tiles, like most launcher/console UI's now use. That shit just takes up too much space when you have a library of a few hundred games. I don't feel like scrolling through pages of tiles, and organizing everything into smaller subfolders is too much work.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The PS4 sorts them out alphabetically automatically. I don't have *that* many games so dividing them by genre would be fun but pointless. The system's pretty streamlined as is. Whatever I'm playing is gonna show up in the UI anyway.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Wait, there's folders in my PS4? The only ordering I do is deleting shit when stuff gotta be downloaded. Which is annoying when the psn store compulsively lies about the size of literally every single bloody game. Not sure why, but they always say it's smaller than it is, often around half or so. Truth is a mythical concept these days.

 

[BrawlMan]

The PS4 sorts them out alphabetically automatically. I don't have *that* many games so dividing them by genre would be fun but pointless. The system's pretty streamlined as is. Whatever I'm playing is gonna show up in the UI anyway.

suit yourself. Even when I had a small amount of games, I like organizing them. Usually when I got about 10 to 15 I started organizing them digitally.

Wait, there's folders in my PS4? The only ordering I do is deleting shit when stuff gotta be downloaded. Which is annoying when the psn store compulsively lies about the size of literally every single bloody game. Not sure why, but they always say it's smaller than it is, often around half or so. Truth is a mythical concept these days.

Hahahaha. Yes. It's been a thing since late 2015/early 2016. All you have to do is to go to whatever gaming app, and hit start. A box will come up and part of that box will either say create a folder/edit folder, and you can have multiple folders. You can take the icons and move them to a different folder if you wish. It'll say move to existing folder. How did you not know about this? I take it you don't read the update information. Not that I exactly blame you.

You can also put it in your own custom backgrounds for your PS4 by USB drive. So that way you won't have to keep buying them or getting them off the PSN store for free. The background on my PS4 home screen is the city shot of Streets of Rage 1.

 

[SupahEwok]

Wait, there's folders in my PS4? The only ordering I do is deleting shit when stuff gotta be downloaded. Which is annoying when the psn store compulsively lies about the size of literally every single bloody game. Not sure why, but they always say it's smaller than it is, often around half or so. Truth is a mythical concept these days.

Dunno how the PS4 store phrases it, but downloads are always smaller than installation folder. Files are compressed for transmission, and are "unpacked" when downloaded. The number you see from the store is likely the amount of data to be downloaded, rather than the footprint of the installed program.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't organize my games at all as I really only like to play one game at once and only ever dabble in 2 or 3 games at a time max. I really like playing and finishing a game, then moving on because if I don't, I end up with a bunch of unfinished games like I do now.

Wait, there's folders in my PS4? The only ordering I do is deleting shit when stuff gotta be downloaded. Which is annoying when the psn store compulsively lies about the size of literally every single bloody game. Not sure why, but they always say it's smaller than it is, often around half or so. Truth is a mythical concept these days.

Dunno how the PS4 store phrases it, but downloads are always smaller than installation folder. Files are compressed for transmission, and are "unpacked" when downloaded. The number you see from the store is likely the amount of data to be downloaded, rather than the footprint of the installed program.

I haven't had to do nearly the storage finagling with the PS4 that I did with the PS3, but I know the PS3 needed twice the space free to download something because it need the space to store it (say 10 GBs), then it needed another 10 GBs free to actually install it (then deleting the download data afterward).

You can also put it in your own custom backgrounds for your PS4 by USB drive. So that way you won't have to keep buying them or getting them off the PSN store for free. The background on my PS4 home screen is the city shot of Streets of Rage 1.

I've never seen a PS4 theme I've ever liked better than 3D Retaliation: Raid Dynamic theme. It came out years ago and it's been my theme forever. 90+% of the dynamic themes are really really low effort.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The PS4 sorts them out alphabetically automatically. I don't have *that* many games so dividing them by genre would be fun but pointless. The system's pretty streamlined as is. Whatever I'm playing is gonna show up in the UI anyway.

suit yourself. Even when I had a small amount of games, I like organizing them. Usually when I got about 10 to 15 I started organizing them digitally.

Honestly I didn't even know you could organize stuff in folders on PS4.
Since I only own physical copies everything's already organized on my gaming shelf, and that's always going to be more comprehensive than organizing the PS4 library since I'm constantly uninstalling stuff due to space issues.

 

[BrawlMan]

The PS4 sorts them out alphabetically automatically. I don't have *that* many games so dividing them by genre would be fun but pointless. The system's pretty streamlined as is. Whatever I'm playing is gonna show up in the UI anyway.

suit yourself. Even when I had a small amount of games, I like organizing them. Usually when I got about 10 to 15 I started organizing them digitally.

Honestly I didn't even know you could organize stuff in folders on PS4.
Since I only own physical copies everything's already organized on my gaming shelf, and that's always going to be more comprehensive than organizing the PS4 library since I'm constantly uninstalling stuff due to space issues.

I organize both on my PS4 and my discs. Do you have at least a 2TB extended storage device? Granted, Black Friday season is long over, but I got a 4TB drive to replace my old one, because it got corrupted. The 4 TB only costed me about $99.99, and it was on sale. This works well for me as my PS4 is a base 500G. 2TB usually go for 79.99-89.99 on sale. That way you're aren't constantly deleting or re-installing games. It got annoying for me just a year after getting my PS4 (I got mine in 2015).

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Hahahaha. Yes. It's been a thing since late 2015/early 2016. All you have to do is to go to whatever gaming app, and hit start. A box will come up and part of that box will either say create a folder/edit folder. and we have multiple folders, you can take the icons and move them to a different folder if you wish. It'll say move to existing folder. How did you not know about this? I take it you don't read the update information. Not that exactly blame you.

You can also put it in your own custom backgrounds for your PS4 by USB drive. So that way you won't have to keep buying them or getting them off the PSN store for free. The background on my PS4 home screen is the city shot of Streets of Rage 1.

Huh, well that's some new information to fiddle with later in the dark! And yeah I been pretty bad at reading any updates unless they ask me to agree to anything new, as a lot of them seem directed toward functions I don't plan on using or incremental differences that are noticeable to the techies but not my untrained bush-brain. It play game and movie good is main desire. Though a less terrible internet browser would be nice too.

Dunno how the PS4 store phrases it, but downloads are always smaller than installation folder. Files are compressed for transmission, and are "unpacked" when downloaded. The number you see from the store is likely the amount of data to be downloaded, rather than the footprint of the installed program.

While that would be a first logical explanation, am not sure it's the case here as the download bar is always the bigger file size, which has been a mildly annoying regular experience in the past when thinking enough tat has been deleted, only to find out after purchasing game that it won't download cause that store page number wasn't accurate, yet it won't tell you the actual size until you already have deleted enough for the download to start, making it a guessing game. But a minor inconvenience is all it can be at worst, so no biggy really.

Weirdly, game updates appeared to have an opposite problem with some titles saying loads of extra space were needed, only to find the update didn't add to the HDD space like it said was required and the deleting was just some kinky summoning ceremony. That is a far rarer experience however.

I've never seen a PS4 theme I've ever liked better than 3D Retaliation: Raid Dynamic theme. It came out years ago and it's been my theme forever. 90+% of the dynamic themes are really really low effort.

Just wanted to add, tried having a looksie for that theme for testing but is not available in this country. Didn't think there'd be any reason for themes being country-restricted unless they were breaking any laws.

 

[Asita]

Organ...ize? Is that something you do with the soundtracks to make them sound more epic or something?

Jokes aside, I can't really say it's something that I've ever really thought to do, unless you count my Steam library's automatic alphabetization. At any given time I only alternate between a handful of games, so I've never needed to organize my collection.

 

[Yoshi178]

i pop the physical disc or cartridge i want to play in the system and then bob's your uncle.
screw digital.

None of that negative, distracting bullshit. This topic is meant for gaming organization of all types. Either stay on topic or don't bother posting. As much as I wish, not every game is going to get a physical release.

Got it? Good.

my game case's are on a shelf. where else would they go?

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Pretty simple really. I have all my Xbox One titles on a decently sized external harddrive, and all my backwards compatible 360 and original Xbox titles on the One's tiny internal drive 'cause they don't use much space. I have a similar set-up with my PC, with one harddrive used exclusively for work files and another used exclusively for games. Everything on their respective drives is arranged alphabetically.