The upcoming release of Modern Warfare 3 is creating waves in the gaming community, not just for its anticipated gameplay, but also for its substantial storage requirements on the PlayStation 5.
The game is expected to occupy a whopping 140GB of SSD space on the console, continuing the Call of Duty franchise’s trend of demanding significant storage capacity.
The information about the game’s size was brought to light by the Twitter account PlayStation Game Size, which is known for extracting file size data directly from Sony’s servers. For players who do not have the Call of Duty HQ app already installed on their PS5, they will need to reserve 140GB of SSD space to download the Modern Warfare 3 campaign.
The Call of Duty HQ app, acting as a central hub for past Call of Duty titles, is a prerequisite for playing Modern Warfare 3, taking up an additional 89GB of space. Following this, the campaign itself is split into two separate downloads, with sizes of 18.042GB and 32.942GB in the USA, and an additional 2GB required for players in Europe.
Potential Increase in Size with Multiplayer
It is important to note that these figures only account for the campaign portion of the game. Drawing parallels from last year’s Modern Warfare 2, which also saw a significant increase in file size with the addition of the online multiplayer component, it is anticipated that Modern Warfare 3 will follow suit.
Players can access the campaign one week prior to the official launch date of November 10, 2023, through a pre-order, and it is expected that a substantial update will be released just before the launch to accommodate the multiplayer features. This could potentially push the total size of the game close to 200GB.
A History of Large File Sizes
The Call of Duty series has a history of large file sizes, with the 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare taking six months post-launch to reach a comparable file size. However, there is a glimmer of hope for players concerned about SSD space, as previous instances have shown that the actual space required on the PS5 can be less than what is initially stated in the download menu.
Official confirmation on the exact storage requirements will be available once the Modern Warfare 3 campaign releases on PS5 and PS4 at the end of this week.
The gaming community has expressed mixed reactions to this news, with some players expressing fatigue with the consistently large file sizes of Call of Duty games, while others are contemplating skipping this year’s installment altogether.
The substantial storage requirements have reignited discussions about the need for better game compression techniques and the impact of high-resolution assets on file sizes.
