Following what seems to be developing into a trend for PS3 games, Ubisoft and Free Radical’s PS3-exclusive HAZE will need to perform a mandatory install of about 4GB of data before you can start your addiction to nectar. The news comes straight from Wuzzi (Aymeric Evennou), the community developer over at the “Ask the developers” forum at Ubisoft.

There’s been a growing debate with some of the latest PS3 titles, such as Devil May Cry 4 and GTA4, and their mandatory gigabyte-sized installs to help reduce load times. Personally, I haven’t really minded waiting around a bit before I get to play a game if it means little to no load times. But then again, I don’t really mind load times that much either. I guess I’ve gotten accustomed to it being a normal facet of videogames throughout my years of gaming.

However, I can see where these large installs over time could potentially become a nuisance for some; particularly those who own a 20GB PS3 versus some of the larger hard drive PS3 models. If more games start to follow this trend, gamers will eventually end up having to do a little economizing with the content on their PS3s, and deleting/reinstalling games depending on what they want to play. The one saving grace is that if you are willing to part with some cash, you can swap the default PS3 hard drive for any other much larger sized drive of your choosing.

I’ve still got plenty of room on my PS3, so I don’t predict that I’ll be scrambling to delete lots of demos to make room for game installs any time soon, but I’m sure it’ll happen at some point. Are any of you out there on the verge of completely stuffing your PS3 with media goodness?

[See also: Haze gallery]