Vanguard devs explain why game size will be much smaller than Warzone & Cold War
Call of Duty players have grown increasingly frustrated with Warzone and Cold War’s massive file size, but Activision has explained why the problem will be fixed in Vanguard.
As Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Black Ops Cold War continue to update, the games’ file sizes have kept growing. Black Ops Cold War is now sitting at around 200 GB, with Warzone adding at least another 50 GB. If you have a smaller hard drive, Call of Duty doesn’t leave much room for anything else.
Activision already allows you to uninstall certain aspects of the games such as Campaign and Zombies, but they have plans to significantly reduce Vanguard’s file size at launch.
“Good news for hard drives everywhere,” tweeted Call of Duty on October 26. “Vanguard’s install size at launch will be significantly below previous Call of Duty releases.”
They didn’t reveal Vanguard’s exact file size, but players can expect to “save up to 30%-50%+ on next-gen console and PC hard drive disk space.” Although last-gen consoles weren’t mentioned, next-gen editions take up significantly more room, so this should bring the sizes more in-line.
This will be done through “new on-demand texture streaming tech,” which is already available in Modern Warfare and Warzone for PC. Rather than taking up space on your hard drive, textures are downloaded on the go. Warzone players previously saved around 25 GB when it was introduced, but their new tech appears to be more effective at reducing file size.
Of course, this could cause issues for players with a poor internet connection, so it remains to be seen if it’ll be optional.
This also lines up with the Microsoft Store listing that Vanguard will be 75 GB on Xbox One, and 95 GB on Xbox Series X|S. These early sizes are much smaller than Cold War’s 133 GB launch size.
Warzone and Vanguard will integrate later this year, bringing the new RICOCHET anti-cheat and new Pacific map. Warzone is currently tied to Modern Warfare, but it’s expected to shift over to Vanguard with Season 1. This could bring across the new tech, but we’ll need to wait for official confirmation.
We’re less than a fortnight away from Vanguard’s November 5 release, so we expect to find out more details before launch.
For more Call of Duty: Warzone, you can check out YouTuber JGOD’s best weapons ahead of Vanguard’s integration.
Image Credit: Activision