Call of Duty has announced that CoD: Vanguard will use a new technique to reduce the required hard drive space at launch on PC and next-gen consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. We will show you the details about the technique, its impact on Warzone, and how large the download might be at launch on MeinMMO.
The size of CoD games has increased significantly in recent years. Values of up to 200 GB were not unusual even for Modern Warfare, especially if you also wanted to play the Battle Royale Warzone. Black Ops Cold War also exceeded 100 GB at launch if you used the high-resolution texture packs.
With Call of Duty: Vanguard, the problem with hard drive space is supposed to improve. In a brief presentation on Twitter, Call of Duty announced that Vanguard saves a significant amount of the required space – at least at launch:
Tweet Translation: Good news for all hard drives: The installation size of Vanguard at launch will be significantly lower than previous “Call Of Duty” releases. A new on-demand texture streaming technology is expected to save up to 30 to 50+ % of hard drive space on next-gen console and PC hard drives.
How large will the new Vanguard be?
How large could Vanguard be at launch? To get an idea of how much Vanguard saves on hard drive space, we looked at the release downloads from the last CoD. For PC, you could choose whether to use the high-resolution texture packs at launch. The pre-loads on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series were:
- PC – Low: 82 GB
- PC – High: 125 GB
- PS5: 133 GB
- Xbox Series: 136 GB
Therefore, the following download sizes for Vanguard are possible:
- 30 % Savings
- PC – Low: 57.4 GB
- PC – High: 87.5 GB
- PS5: 93.1 GB
- Xbox Series: 95.2 GB
- 50 % Savings
- PC – Low: 41 GB
- PC – High: 62.5 GB
- PS5: 66.5 GB
- Xbox Series: 68 GB
What about the old consoles? The tweet only mentions next-gen consoles. If you are still on PS4 or Xbox One, you might not benefit from the revamped on-demand texture streaming as the newer consoles PS5 and Xbox Series do.
What is on-demand texture streaming? Call of Duty uses your internet connection while playing to download specific textures or graphic assets. Since all modes of Call of Duty – except for campaign – require an internet connection, this should not cause you any disadvantages.
Whether the textures you download while playing stay on your hard drive and the game files eventually reach the familiar size is still uncertain.
What about the giant patches? How many of the textures the developers organize through on-demand streaming is also currently unknown. Things like operator skins and weapon blueprints would be suitable, and their size should not be underestimated.
Patches might also become a bit smaller in the future. However, the big chunks, like new maps or fresh content in general, are likely to come entirely with the patches and will take up a significant amount of storage. Here, we will have to wait and see.
What does this mean for Warzone? The battle royale is likely to save little space with the new technology. Future patches may be somewhat smaller, but due to the abundance of old skins and blueprints from Cold War and Modern Warfare that remain in the game, you shouldn’t expect any significant jumps here.
When does Vanguard start? The new CoD launches on Friday, November 5, at midnight. You can already start on Friday. With the launch, there will be 16 maps for 6vs6 in the game, a campaign set in World War II, and the zombie mode featuring the new gameplay experience “The Beginning”.
You will have to wait a little longer for the changes in Warzone. A date for the switch to Vanguard technology has not been confirmed yet. Speculations suggest a release of the new Warzone map at the end of November/beginning of December.
If you want to read more about the integration of Vanguard and Warzone, check here: The 5 most important changes when Warzone “fuses” with CoD Vanguard.
