Activision justifies Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's massive install size

[midian182]

What just happened? Call of Duty games have long taken up enormous chunks of players' storage space, and CoD: Modern Warfare 3 is no different. Those who preordered the game ahead of its November 10 launch date have found that the total install takes up over 200GB. Now, Activision has explained why.

In a post on the official Call of Duty X account, Activision confirmed that file sizes for Modern Warfare 3 are larger than last year. It explains that the game's enormous size is due to the increased amount of content available on Day 1, including open world Zombies, support for items that are carried forward from Modern Warfare 2, as well as the map files for the current Call of Duty: Warzone.

IGN notes that MW3's early access campaign has a total install size of 234.9GB on PlayStation 5. While that includes Modern Warfare 2, now Call of Duty HQ, as well as Modern Warfare 3's campaign, it does not include other unreleased elements of the game, including Multiplayer and Zombies.

Activision notes that users can go to the Manage Files section of the COD HQ launcher menu if they want to uninstall specific content they don't play. The company adds that as part of its ongoing optimization efforts, the final installation size will be smaller than the combined previous Call of Duty games.

On the PC, Modern Warfare 3 requires an SSD with 149 GB of available space at launch, or 78 GB if COD HQ and Warzone are already installed on a machine.

The storage demands might be high, but the PC system requirements for MW3 are quite light compared to many of the big titles we've seen this year. The game recommends a Core i5-6700K / Ryzen 5 1600X alongside a Radeon RX 6600 XT / GTX 1080 Ti /RTX 3060.

The RTX 3060 is now the most popular graphics card among Steam survey participants, so most people should be able to enjoy the game as intended. Even playing in 4K isn't too bad, comparatively, requiring a Core i7-8700K / Ryzen 7 2700X with a Radeon RX 6800 XT / RTX 3080 / RTX 4070

Recommended game storage over the last 15 years

The recommended amount of storage for games has jumped from an average of 11 GB in 2012 to 80 GB in 2023, marking an increase of just under 6.3 GB per year. You can read more about why this is the case in our feature: Bigger Than Godzilla: Why Are Games Using So Many Gigabytes?

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100720-activision-justifies-call-duty-modern-warfare-3-massive.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Compressing and optimization takes time and effort, and we dont do that at activision anymore. Now buy the latest bang bang wahoo.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Not only is the gameplay for these games trash, the outlandish size of the games are another reason for me to avoid getting them due to data caps. There's no way I'd want to sacrifice 15% of my monthly data cap for a single game, no thank you.

I tried to download Starfield a few months back off the Xbox pass thing on my PC. Not only did the download fail about 2/3 of the way through (for reasons unknown to me, even after trying to search up the error message Xbox pass gave), but I couldn't just restart the download from the failed point. That 100GB or so that I had downloaded had to be deleted and the entire game had to start all over with the whole download processes......screw that.

I miss the days of physical media....

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Full DCS install is like 600GB, hard drives cost peanuts, stop crying.

 

[Nobina]

These games are a copy-paste job, and they forgot to replace the existing files. That is the explanation for it's size.

 

[bondflavor]

It blows my mind that these games are as wildly successful as they are. Kind of depressing, really.

 

[texasrattler]

It blows my mind that these games are as wildly successful as they are. Kind of depressing, really.

One word, kids. When I say kids, I mean from like 6-26 years old. So many kids still have mom and dad paying for games and systems. Including the twenty something year olds. If that was to ever change, unlikely, then we could possibly see a change in gaming but I wouldnt count on any of that happening anytime soon.

 

[bondflavor]

One word, kids. When I say kids, I mean from like 6-26 years old. So many kids still have mom and dad paying for games and systems. Including the twenty something year olds. If that was to ever change, unlikely, then we could possibly see a change in gaming but I wouldnt count on any of that happening anytime soon.

Well, I don't think that entirely accounts for it. I'm sure there's a lot of 30+ year olds who grew up playing every game in the series and simply don't know any different.

Anecdotally, when I was a kid, I didn't have my own money to buy games with, so I could usually only get new games on Christmas, birthdays, or by trading in a bunch of games at GameStop. But I grew up on Nintendo games, so I played (usually) quality games and not Call of Duty regurgitated x57.

 

[texasrattler]

Well, I don't think that entirely accounts for it. I'm sure there's a lot of 30+ year olds who grew up playing every game in the series and simply don't know any different.

Anecdotally, when I was a kid, I didn't have my own money to buy games with, so I could usually only get new games on Christmas, birthdays, or by trading in a bunch of games at GameStop. But I grew up on Nintendo games, so I played (usually) quality games and not Call of Duty regurgitated x57.

30 n 40 yr Olds aren't buying the new cod every year, kids are. CoD is famous among kids of all ages these days. They routinely by whatever cod game comes out, even when it's crap like WWII and Vanguard.
Kids will outweigh any 30/40 year olds playing the game.
The hype behind the game these days is insane.
Mobile rakes is so much money, that's even crazier. This is one of the reasons MS wanted King and Activision. They have big mobile games and with CoD mobile launching soon its going to get even bigger.

 

[toooooot]

Kinda pointless to be complaining when you want more content, especially when it is made using latest and best tools.

 

[m3tavision]

30 n 40 yr Olds aren't buying the new cod every year, kids are. CoD is famous among kids of all ages these days. They routinely by whatever cod game comes out, even when it's crap like WWII and Vanguard.
Kids will outweigh any 30/40 year olds playing the game.
The hype behind the game these days is insane.
Mobile rakes is so much money, that's even crazier. This is one of the reasons MS wanted King and Activision. They have big mobile games and with CoD mobile launching soon its going to get even bigger.

You do know kids grow up...? (And that Call of Duty is 20 years old.)

Kids play nintendo and graduate to a console, then a PC when they start playing with friends. And most agree children playing COD on consoles have ruined the franchise for PC players and adults... but then again, they are just fodder.

 

[ardela]

It doesn't shock me, more qualitative content more storage

 

[texasrattler]

You do know kids grow up...? (And that Call of Duty is 20 years old.)

Kids play nintendo and graduate to a console, then a PC when they start playing with friends. And most agree children playing COD on consoles have ruined the franchise for PC players and adults... but then again, they are just fodder.

Tons of kids have never ever played a Nintendo console. Tons start with MS or Sony these days. More so Sony but now with MS owning the biggest FPS game in history, COD, we will see if things change any.

I know how old COD is, I own the original game, expansion that most dont even remember or know about and COD2, all on PC.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Tons of kids have never ever played a Nintendo console. Tons start with MS or Sony these days. More so Sony but now with MS owning the biggest FPS game in history, COD, we will see if things change any.

I know how old COD is, I own the original game, expansion that most dont even remember or know about and COD2, all on PC.

COD2 is my favorite - still got a copy for my PC, too. It was all pretty much downhill for COD from there except for maybe COD4 which was okay, but certainly was not as good as 2.

 

[m3tavision]

And like last year, COD had a billion in pre-sales... so it are not kids buying, it are adults. Kids play the free version...

 

[texasrattler]

And like last year, COD had a billion in pre-sales... so it are not kids buying, it are adults. Kids play the free version...

Kids get their mommy n daddy's to pay for a ton of stuff. Adults pay for things for sure, but kids play games way more.

Everyone plays free games. Some free games make some of most money. Just look at call of duty Warzone. Couple billion dollars for a free game. Kids play that game even tho it's not a kids game.