An AssetBundle is an archive file containing platform specific Assets (Models, Textures, Prefabs, Audio clips, and even entire Scenes) that can be loaded at runtime. AssetBundles can express dependencies between each other; e.g. a material in AssetBundle A can reference a texture in AssetBundle B. For efficient delivery over networks, AssetBundles can be compressed with a choice of built-in algorithms depending on use case requirements (LZMA and LZ4).
AssetBundles can be useful for downloadable content (DLC), reducing initial install size, loading assets optimized for the end-user’s platform, and reduce runtime memory pressure.
Good question, actually “AssetBundle” can refer to two different, but related things.
First is the actual file on disk. This we call the AssetBundle archive, or just archive for short in this document. The archive can be thought of as a container, like a folder, that holds additional files inside