Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the BR Warzone are great, but also really huge. This leads to real storage problems on consoles. How much space do comparable games consume?
This frustrates players: Currently, CoD: Warzone is probably the hottest shooter and excites over 50 million gamers. But even though everyone wants to play, some gamers can no longer cope with the game’s escalating storage appetite, including updates.
Especially on consoles, the hard drive storage is struggling under the heavy data load. As of now (April 30), the full version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare along with Warzone takes up 184.5 GB on the PlayStation 4.
Everyday situation of a CoD player before an update: When one of the updates for the shooter is coming, I look forward to the upcoming bug fixes and new content, but I also worry. Because how big will the patch be this time, is the available hard drive space enough? The big update 1.20 was, for example, almost 30 GB and increased the required storage again by several precious gigabytes.
Instead of anticipation, planning is needed. It is not uncommon for older games to be removed from the drive or moved from the faster SSD to the internal HDD. Some players, however, do not have extra storage on board, and some PS4 models only come with a standard 500GB hard drive.
If you subtract CoD and the system files, there is hardly any space left for other games. This is not a hypothetical problem, but is becoming a serious issue for many players. It almost feels like CoD wants to push all other games off the hard drive.
This is how the developers are reacting: The start of Season 2 was marked by an update of about 68 GB, leaving players with clenched teeth. In response, developer Infinity Ward apologized. Production Director Paul Heli explained that this update was so large to make future patches as well as the game itself smaller.
Now, two months later and in the middle of Season 3, the new update is indeed smaller. But to call about 30 GB small would be an understatement. Interestingly, the patch is at least split into 2 parts on consoles (via GamePro). Owners of the free version of Warzone need only 10 GB of that.
How much storage do other top games consume in comparison?
Is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare really such a big space eater? We take a look at comparable games on the PlayStation 4. Please note that here the actual used space on the hard drive is indicated. Store figures may differ.
Other PS4 games are this big:
- Destiny 2: 98.9 GB
- The Division 2: 108.2 GB
- Apex Legends: 47.2 GB
- Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End: 60.8 GB
- Warframe: 32.7 GB
Especially MMO shooters with large worlds, instances, many missions, or raids like Destiny 2 and The Division 2 consume huge amounts of storage. In comparison, Warframe almost seems tiny, but relies on procedurally generated levels in many missions (except for the two large maps).
Apex Legends manages with just under 50 GB and offers comparable content to Warzone but does not take up a large multiplayer shooter including campaign on the drive.
Why is Call of Duty so big? The multiplayer mode and the battle royale Warzone need parts of the main game to function. In that sense, you have 4 CoD games on your storage:
- a polarizing story campaign
- a huge multiplayer mode
- a ridiculously hard co-op mode
- the battle royale Warzone
Regularly new skins, maps, or operators are added, consuming even more storage. Although Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone together offer a lot of content that partially justifies the data volume, it does not change the acute problem.
As the shooter continues to grow, console players will face real space shortages. Another acute problem is cheaters, but there is now a plan against this plague: CoD MW & Warzone finally have the important feature against cheaters
