Players often complain about the massive storage space that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and CoD Warzone require. You should probably be glad that it’s 2020 – because a few years ago your closet would have been full of installation CDs.
How many CDs would Call of Duty need: CDs are an outdated medium and were once used for data storage. Now, however, new games are known for their size and above all players are frustrated with the storage space required for Call of Duty. We at MeinMMO wondered: How many CDs would one actually need for Modern Warfare?
Let’s start with the newer generation. DVDs (Digital Video/Versatile Disc) are probably more familiar to many of you, even though they are already largely outdated:
- a modern standard DVD can store 8.5 GB
- MeinMMO author Benedict Grothaus currently has a CoD partition on his PC of 201 GB
- 201 divided by 8.5 is roughly 23.65
- but since there are no half DVDs, we round up: 24 DVDs are needed for CoD
However, DVDs are, as mentioned, the newer version of the CD. A standard CD (Compact Disc) holds only 650 MB – so less than one-tenth of a DVD. If you had to install Call of Duty via CD, you would need a whopping 310 CDs for the current state.
To be fair, my partition includes both Modern Warfare and Warzone, and we are calculating here completely without compressions, but still, that is an incredibly large number. Just imagine, each CD has its own case, and you would need to store 310 CD cases somewhere in your room…
A whole closet just for CoD
What the hell is a CD? Probably some of you may not know CDs anymore, but before the spread of digital downloads, CDs and their successors were the medium on which games were distributed.
Back then, at LAN parties, which only the really old gamers among you probably know, CDs were passed around so everyone could install and play the current game together. The cables were mostly used for exchanging… other files.
Those playing on the PS4 or Xbox One might still know BluRays, but those are already significantly advanced versions of the CD and hold many times their volume. And even those have partly become obsolete, as new consoles like the PS5 come in All-Digital versions.
What use is the information to me? It’s great for parties. All jokes aside, while this is just interesting trivia, it does illustrate how large Modern Warfare really is. Approximately 200 GB sounds like a lot, but it’s somehow not really tangible on a hard drive.
Physical versions of games are still popular, but given this size, they are simply not always feasible. It’s then not so surprising if only a symbolic cardboard disk is found in the case.
However, just imagining 310 CDs makes it clearer why players on PS4 and Xbox One want to reduce the size with tricks. No one wants a whole shelf full of cases.
But it also shows that it would be problematic to deliver new patches and content to the players in this analog way anymore. A recent update for the 200-player mode in Battle Royale required 39 GB. That alone would be another 60 CDs that developers would have to send you and that you’d need to store somewhere.
