Activision unveiled the PC stats for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War earlier today, revealing that the multiplayer component of the game only takes up 50 GB of hard drive space. This is in stark contrast to last year's entry in the franchise Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was a legendarily sizable install that gobbled up free space. With storage at more of a premium than ever with the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, the ability to install just small portions of any game will be highly valued in the years ahead, especially with games that can get as big as the latest Call of Duty.
When Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War releases on November 19, players will get a complete suite of features they expect from a Call of Duty game made by Treyarch. There's a full story campaign that serves as a direct sequel to the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, a full multiplayer suite for everyone's deathmatch needs, and a zombies mode that continues the out-there narrative from past entries. It's a whole lot of game in one package, but Activision will take advantage of next-gen platform features to ensure that it doesn't have to be a lot of games on a player's SSD.
In the full specs update for PC, Activision revealed that the full Black Ops Cold War install clocks in at 175 GB, but players only interested in the multiplayer can simply install that chunk of the game and only take up 50 GB of space. This feature wasn't available in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare at launch on PC, but was eventually included to match its console counterparts. Even with that feature coming standard, the ominous note of "at launch" beside each total guarantees that the game will balloon over 200 GB at some point in the future.
In fact, on the other end of the spectrum, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's recommendations for Ultra RTX (or running the game in 4K with ray tracing) boosts the install size to 250 GB. These are the types of games that will be supported on both high-end consoles coming out this November, and that install size will take up a full fourth of the available space on the Xbox Series X at launch. Of course, there's no guarantee that the console version will be as large as this PC install, but considering some of the other games that have been inspected in the leadup to launch, it's a safe bet.
Hard drive space and juggling huge installs like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is going to become a fact of life when it comes to the premium next-gen experience starting this November. Not every game is going to take up a fourth of the included SSD, but many players will want to keep games like Call of Duty installed simply to pop into a quick multiplayer session. The ability to uninstall single-player portions while keeping replayable multiplayer bits on the drive will be a vital component in any game trying to dethrone the titans of multiplayer in the years to come.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is set to release on November 13 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Call of Duty