This comes up on nearly every project that gets past prototype, usually phrased as "should we move to Addressables".
Resources is simple and it ships everything in that folder, always, in your main build. That is fine for a small game. It becomes a problem when your download size matters, when you want to patch content without shipping a new binary, or when memory is tight because everything loads together.
Addressables gives you load on demand, remote hosting, and a dependency graph so shared assets are not duplicated. The cost is real: an extra build step, a groups configuration to maintain, and asynchronous loading everywhere, which changes how your code is written.
A reasonable rule. Stay on direct references and Resources if your game is small, ships as one binary, and you are not planning live content. Move to Addressables if any of these are true: your build is pushing a store size limit, you want to add levels or events without a new release, or you are loading big scenes and hitting memory ceilings on low-end devices.
The migration trap. Do not do it halfway. A project with half its content in Addressables and half in Resources gets the complexity of both and the benefit of neither, and duplicated assets across the two systems are hard to spot.
If you do migrate, do it during a quiet period, not while a release is being prepared. Async loading changes initialisation order and you will find bugs that only appear on a slow device.
Where are you feeling the pain: download size, memory, or wanting to patch content? The answer differs for each.
Resources is simple and it ships everything in that folder, always, in your main build. That is fine for a small game. It becomes a problem when your download size matters, when you want to patch content without shipping a new binary, or when memory is tight because everything loads together.
Addressables gives you load on demand, remote hosting, and a dependency graph so shared assets are not duplicated. The cost is real: an extra build step, a groups configuration to maintain, and asynchronous loading everywhere, which changes how your code is written.
A reasonable rule. Stay on direct references and Resources if your game is small, ships as one binary, and you are not planning live content. Move to Addressables if any of these are true: your build is pushing a store size limit, you want to add levels or events without a new release, or you are loading big scenes and hitting memory ceilings on low-end devices.
The migration trap. Do not do it halfway. A project with half its content in Addressables and half in Resources gets the complexity of both and the benefit of neither, and duplicated assets across the two systems are hard to spot.
If you do migrate, do it during a quiet period, not while a release is being prepared. Async loading changes initialisation order and you will find bugs that only appear on a slow device.
Where are you feeling the pain: download size, memory, or wanting to patch content? The answer differs for each.