COD: Modern Warfare 3’s File Size is Huge
With this year’s Call of Duty (surprisingly named ‘Modern Warfare 3 again) coming later this week, fans have been eagerly awaiting news on how much storage space the game will take up. With the most recent game starting at 125GB (without updates), you may not be too shocked to find out that the sequel is very large in terms of storage. What you may be surprised to hear is that it’s 25GB larger- weighing in at an estimated 149GB without updates down the line.
Image by Activision
To say this is massive is an understatement. Although we are in the next generation of consoles with the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, this amount of storage space means roughly a fifth of your available space will purely be dedicated to Call of Duty. If you want this entry and last year’s Modern Warfare 2 to be on the same console, good luck trying to have many more AAA games installed at once. The problem is made even worse when you consider that the Xbox Series S only allows up to 512GB to be used for storage- which cuts your space in half with these two games alone.
Image by Activision
Fans have already got a taste of how diabolical Modern Warfare 3’s storage space will be with news of how much space the beta of the game alone requires. While the file for the beta on its own is only 24GB, Activision has said that players will have to install the ‘Call of Duty HQ Hub’ in order to take part in it. This is essentially a platform that allows you to pick which Call of Duty you want to play from it without having to download titles separately. The problem here is that this hub takes up 100GB, and there’s no way to participate in the beta without it. That means that you need a spare 124GB to play a small slice of an upcoming Call of Duty game.
Image by Activision
These insane numbers point to a problematic trend when it comes to more recent, ambitious AAA games. With more features, details and graphical fidelity, these games become more and more demanding on your console’s storage space. As this has only gotten worse in the last few years (and with external storage extenders costing hundreds of pounds), players are forced to either fork out for extra space or delete their existing games. For Call of Duty players, their console is quickly becoming a COD-only machine. Luckily, there is some reprieve, as players can delete the campaign potion when finished, they’ll be able to save some space. That is, before the huge updates to come later down the line.
