How do you manage memory in a large game that ships on consoles with fixed memory?

What the interviewer wants to hear

• Memory budgets per system and asset type
• Streaming of levels, textures and audio
• Avoid fragmentation with pools and custom allocators
• Track allocations with tools and reports in CI
• Reduce asset size: compression, mip levels, LODs

Model answer

On consoles memory is fixed, so I set clear budgets early, for example how much for textures, meshes, audio, animation and gameplay, and assign owners. Most content is streamed: world partitions or level chunks load by distance, textures stream only the mip levels needed, and audio streams from disk. To avoid fragmentation over long sessions, I use pools for frequently created objects, frame or linear allocators for temporary data, and avoid many small heap allocations during gameplay. I track memory with tools like Unreal Memory Insights or platform tools, tag allocations by system, and run automated memory reports on test levels in CI so growth is caught early. Asset sizes are reduced with platform texture compression, LODs and removing unused content. Finally, we test long play sessions to catch leaks.

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