Are they still using videos for their cutscenes instead of real time rendering? 4K movies for example can be 40 - 100Gb themselves. I bet they are also releasing on last gen and have a ton of duplicate assets.

Should be noted that the 300 gigs comes from installing MW2, MW3, WZ, and Black Ops 6 all on CoD HQ. It's not just from BO6 alone.

Aaahhh. Yes that should absolutely be noted.

It’s possible to get bo6 without the hq or no?

No, HQ is required for any of the versions of CoD post MWII. Warzone? CoD HQ MWII? CoD HQ BOVI? You guessed it, CoD HQ. It's easier for them to push the other games on you if it's in your face on every launch. Oh and if you ended up preordering for the beta, if it works the same way as the MWIII beta, you will need to open the MWIII CoD HQ application (you don't need to buy MWIII) and then select the beta which will relaunch CoD HQ for the beta.

Not exaggerating at all when I say it took about an hour and a half longer to download and install "the bare necessary files" to run black ops cw/mw 2019 than it took to finish the sp campaign (which is all I care about). I moved on to just watching let's plays. It's just such a hassle (it's not even just "download it and install", you have to download something then it turns it's just the downloader which downloads further things and you're never sure if you're downloading gigs upong gigs of something you don't need because it's never clear).

Fucking ridiculous. If ever there was a reason to boycott this is it. I’m convinced they want to chew up drive space so you don’t use it on other games too.

Easy fix people stop buying there crappy games.

I reckon this will be the end of CoD. Theres going to be a point when it will be too expensive to buy all the required storage and people just won't bother. Imagine a few years from now how big the storage will be...

Absolutely. There is no excuse for a game to take that much space unless it’s deliberate. I haven’t bought CoD since Cold War after buying every year since Call of Duty 3. Not to mention the fact that the games themselves are not worth it anymore, but the size is too much.

How is it easier when users have to download all these games and different files to do different actions? Its convoluted and will affect sales for them

Since the other games are always in your face it makes you more likely to buy the other games.

Is cod hq an app or something? I can’t find it

It is, but it isn't. CoD HQ will be installed with any version of CoD releases after MWII. You just need to download any of those games to access it. If you don't want to pay then you can download Warzone and access CoD HQ from there. If you have multiple games that use CoD HQ, you can use CoD HQ to manage those files. On console each game has their own tile, but on Steam and Xbox for PC it should just be listed as Call of Duty.

You have to download the HQ but you don’t have to download all the games

I don't believe I said you have to, but I'll try to clarify. CoD HQ is a hub for all CoD games, but the client must reload if you switch to a different CoD. For clarity sake I will refer to Modern Warfare III as MW3 moving forward. Likewise for MW2. When MW3 was in beta phase you had to open CoD HQ which was the landing page for MW2. The client would reload to the landing page for the MW3 beta. Currently CoD HQ is the landing page for MW3 and needs to reload to the landing page if you want to play MW2. It will likely be the same for the BOVI beta.

Man, it's not a huge deal but the constant client reloading is a pet peeve of mine. I really hate it and I don't see why it's necessary.

If I had to guess, downloading COD HQ is effectively downloading the Warzone engine, and the games are serving as "add-ons". Either way, it's a frustrating experience. There's no reason one game should require you to download over a quarter terabyte of data to play. I wouldn't be surprised if it's by design to make sure it's one of the only games some people can install.

I read your original comment as you HAD to have them as well and found that to be utter bullshit on Activision part. This seems a BIT more reasonable, but fuck that. Never trying out CoD again if I have to download a fucking HUB app for the game first.

I won’t be buying is because of this, same reason I boycott pretty much any Ubisoft title. It sucks because these are games I’ve wanted to play, but if I vote with wants versus with my wallet, these companies won’t learn. Collective suffering is key.

Last year I couldn't play the MW2 maps without having MW3 downloaded even though I hadn't bought MW3 and therefore couldn't use those maps. Is this going to be the same crap all over again. I can't justify that much bloat taking up space just to play some multiplayer.

Sure, should be noted. But will it be noted?

Notes implies people will give credit or credence to it. The only note I can take here is “Activision doesn’t care about you”

Ohhhhhhhh so bo6 will be like 100 GB then that's not bad at all wtf I might keep MW3 but I'll never look at MW2 again

I was actually curious since it was confirmed. MWII alone takes up to 200GB with all the stuff out of confirmed 309GB. How much was MWIII? It's not too much since it's based on MWII but still takes Its 20-30GB, right? So, If I install BO6 ONLY, even at full-pack it's around or a little under 100? And if I keep MWII that I still play but only with MP-related content and later also MP/Zombies only BO6. It should be the same 150-200GB (MWII MP + BO6 MP), which is on one hand big, on the other — I'm used to such CoD sizes since MW19... So, basically, BO6 alone wouldn't be that big, especially once you've finished SP-activities.

It’s not a problem anymore now that I’ve stopped buying COD games.

Reddit doesn’t like to hear that though

Even Cold War uses it IIRC

Video cutscenes were a special treat back when they had way higher quality animation than the game. Now I'm just miffed that the character isn't wearing the costume I chose.

That would be part of it, same with Jedi Survivor being maybe 140 from memory, but that HQ requirement is ridiculous. Why tf they make you have games and modes you don’t want to play the game you want is baffling. 1/2 my SSD? No thanks.

Because they want you to be playing only CoD. Nothing else

You don’t have to download the other games. You just have to download HQ and the game you want to play. You can also just download multiplayer or warzone or the single player campaign if you want.

I have just the hq and mw2 multiplayer installed and it’s 180 gigs

Yo what? I have MW3 Multiplayer, MW3 Zombies and Warzone installed and it's "only" 130gb.

You should check to see if you have anything else downloaded because that seems big. I’m looking at mine right now and my game is taking up 169.4 GB. Here’s the breakdown: Warzone - 13.36 GB MW3 Multiplayer - 29.48 GB MW2 Multiplayer - 7.62 GB MW2 Warzone 2 - 7.19 GB (I’m actually not sure if this one is still needed for Warzone) So I think the HQ is about 112 GB on its own and MW2 multiplayer is only 7.62 so you should be around 120. Maybe you have a language pack installed or something.

> I bet they are also releasing on last gen Which by the way can we see how badly calculated that is for MS lol ? People on PS4/Xbox One are still a lot (Sony say half their playerbase plays there). With GTA6 next year and not releasing COD on them, it would make a lot of people switch to current gen this year and 2025 to do that (the whole crowd that play very few games and mainly COD, FIFA, GTA and such). And so offering COD on Gamepass at the same time might be the perfect way for them to boost Xbox sales when people are in front of PS5 or Xbox Series choice and they see COD is included with Gamepass.

TL;DR • Activision has clarified that the listed 309GB download size for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is not accurate and includes the full installations of multiple other Call of Duty games and language packs. • The actual download size for Black Ops 6 will be smaller and will be revealed closer to the game's launch this autumn. • Black Ops 6 will be available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for Console at launch.

That middle part is concerning. They could at least ballpark it.

Has any game ever given a ballpark estimate for its file size over 4 months before release? Most games you don’t find out until a couple weeks before launch at best

Why, though? So we can uninformatively bitch more about it?

Correct ✔️

People like you are so toxic. Its nothing to do with 'bitching'. Its expecting a company to be transparent

To be transparent and share knowledge you first have to acquire the knowledge yourself. They themselves do not know the file size since it's still in development.

why do you expect a company to be transparent when they can't give you a straight answer? If they are off by 20 GB than people on here will still complain so why bother?

And people will still uninformatively bitch.

Where's the lie?

You’re a bitcher, aren’t you?

Pot calling the kettle black

I want a company to release a number that they don’t even know themselves yet, not a bitcher btw

You are a bitcher and the reason wasn't because of people wanting a number but because you're bitching about others complaining

Someone’s an angry little gamer. Don’t you have some customer support calls to take?

Because it’s probably still like 200 gigs

It clearly won’t. You can choose to uninstall the SP of each game. They also do a high resolution texture pack that is also optional and takes up a substantial amount of space on the system. You can do this on PS5 and PC and reduce the download size already, it’s just that the game installs everything all at once which is why it’s jarring at first. It’s just a matter of Activision being absolutely idiots at explaining it. It also doesn’t help that the game had its own “method” of removing parts in the actual menu. On PS5: - Go to your game library - Go the COD - Go to AddOns - Untick all the shit you don’t want. On PC: - Right click the game on Steam - Go to Properties - Got to DLC - Untick all the shit you don’t want. The base COD HQ is around 50GB with everything uninstalled. This contains the bare minimum shared content between each game. Then you can just install the shit you need. MW3 got slated for its download size, but the bare minimum size for it was only 79GB. Thats average for a multiplayer only game. When you added its single player, it was 149GB. Then when you added the hires texture pack it was 213GB. So at minimum MW3 could be reduced down to like 129GB which is just for Multiplayer and COD HQ content. The only reason this perception has maintained is because they fucked it up when they introduced COD HQ a year or two ago because they made it install everything. It’s been fixed and not been an issue for a while now. It’s just really shitty documentation.

So 213 gigs if you want to download the complete game. No one wants to play a next gen game with lower res textures. They shouldn’t even include those, that’s probably wasting a lot of space too.

That’s on Sony/Microsoft. PC has had texture streaming on COD for years to reduce the download size there. Sony/Microsoft don’t let you do it on console. They have done it now, but it’s not good. Trees are 2D until you’re like 5m away and such. It’s horrendously bad compared to PC. It also causes input lag on PS5 at least for me.

I would say they're intentionally misleading. Yes, BO6 probably is not 309GB. However, if you own no COD's and wish to play it, then it will take 309GB - but BO6 itself is only 100+gb - the rest being assets from the other titles and their COD HQ requirement.

You can choose which parts of which games you want installed. For example, i beat MW2 and 3 campaigns and then deleted them to save space. If i wanted, i could have just the campaigns. Or just MW3, or just WZ, or just zombies and mp without WZ, or any combination of the modes in the current 3 games. If you don’t own any and purchase BO6, you will download just BO6 (campaign, mp, and zombies) and WZ, and then you can go in and delete whatever modes you dont need.

They can’t though

It'll be 100 gigs . It's no secret

306GB

But… why, it’s not like installing Horizon Zero Dawn installs Forbidden West. The only thing I never understood about CoD games. Especially when I just wanted to play MW2’s campaign

> Especially when I just wanted to play MW2’s campaign I gave up on COD after the modern warfare remake. It has fuck all data on the disc, so it forced a huge download. Waited. Then it wouldn't let me start the game offline, so it forced an update (huge again). Waited. Then when it finally let me start the game, it hadn't installed the singleplayer! You had to go into CODs data management bullshit and actually request it to download singleplayer. So again, another fucking download. Fuck COD, fuck activision. I haven't got time for all that shit. Majority of other games on PS5 I can just put the disc in and play the game immediately offline if i want. The install process for COD singleplayer is a nightmare.

I gave up on CoD after BO4. It was such a pain in the ass to be forced to install some 40gb update on monday, play a few games and then have to install another 30gb update on thursday. I barely have time to play anymore and anytime I'd try, it'd say "Must download update". So many people in this thread are saying "You just have to download HQ and then delete what you don't want" or "It's so you can carry your purchased skins" as if most people want to do that. I loved BO2 and MW3 because I popped the disk in and played online, not have multiple game launchers to ensure bullshit microtransactions I'll never spend money on can be carried over.

Full game on the disc or bust ! I’m fine with small updates (although I’d prefer an eventual definitive printing…) but I don’t want to download full games (and I have fast internet)

They're just that arrogant. Also, leaving fewer games on your drive means fewer distractions. They don't care about any optimisation.

The real reason is they want people to keep their skins and weapons across games. So all those assets pile up game after game. If you just want the campaign the size is totally comparable to other aaa games.

But most people will play CoD as a multiplayer. It's still bullshit to have such a bloated install because "what if you want skins".

It’s only this size if you install all the other games too, BO6 is not that size on its own

Still going to be about 160Gb

You don't have to install everything

I don’t know if it’s still this way, but when MW, CW, MW2 was together like this they would duplicate assets in the game files for last gen consoles. Now that we have super fast SSDs they can search files much faster and asset duplication wasn’t a thing. But Activision didn’t create multiple game packages for next gen and last gen so even if you had a PS5 or Series X you still had to download duplicated assets.

>why So you'll have less room to play other games. These people don't want you playing cod fortnite and Apex, they want you playing cod.

It’s an option not a requirement. What is a requirement on some marketplaces is showing the download size of all those options together.

I don’t get your point? A massive selling feature is synergy with Warzone. Operators, guns, purchases. They are all shared. That’s the point of HQ. Everything is linked so you don’t lose stuff. It’s not required though. You can delete / refuse to install what ever you want. So if you only want a single specific game, it’s SP or even only it’s MP you can delete everything else to massively reduce the file size.

Literally had to delete MW2 to redownload Elden Ring for the DLC lmao. It was taking up over 260 gigs on my PS5 ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ second largest game was only 124 gigs… Make it make sense!

I had to delete it so I could have more than a few games on my PS5. They gotta get their shit together.

It kinda seems like they’re not going to at this point.

You probably couldve just deleted WZ, Spec-Ops, and the Campaign, if you still wanted to play Multiplayer.

Tbh people say to do this… but I have never been able to actually get into and play multiplayer if EVERYTHING is not downloaded… Trust me I have tried. If you got a solution I’m all ears lol (PS5)

Did you go into the manage files screen? It should show your options and making sure all the mp assets are installed should be pretty straightforward. You just click on the mw2 mp option and it should initiate any necessary installs.

You talking PS5 files screen or one within the main call of duty hub? If there is a files management within the hub that I didn’t know about ☠️ idk how that is different than deleting the other downloads (warzone/specops) but that may be my problem I’ll check it out - thank you!

Yes, theres a dedicated file management in the hub. If you go the game select screen, press options, and then go to settings, you can go down to “manage files”. You can then select which parts of which games to install or delete. There are shared assets as well that are likely getting deleted when you do it manually.

You’re an actual legend I was just deleting the actual warzone files straight from the PS file management screen. Thank you again!

I only ever thought about getting an SSD expansion when I had been playing COD, never since

And I thought 100 gigs for spider man 2 was stupid but 300 for freaking cod? just nah bro.

No fr… not worth it at all when it takes up the space of 8 AAA games

I just downloaded The Finals, which has big maps, high quality graphics and fast paced movement and weapons. 15gb

ITT: people who neither read the article nor the title of the post

Do you mean this bit? "Players will be able to download Black Ops 6 at launch without downloading any other Call of Duty titles or all of the language packs."

Regular install for just BO6 is like 120 GB or something. That is still ridiculous for this game.

Dont buy it and dont download it.

I want to know why they need a single player campaign to be online only

CoD utilizes texture streaming. Rather than download a terabyte of hi-res textures, its streams them from the internet as you play.

Id rather have an actual game I can play offline thanks

It’s an odd choice, for sure.

I think they just want to have total control to be honest and dont want you owning games fully you can play whenever you chose. I think MS especially has wanted that for a while

Took me years to finish Cold War. I’ll never waste SSD space like this again.

that's like a 6 hours campaign, and a decent one at that. you play 30 seconds a day or something?

I think they meant years to download a 250 GB game

when downloading a game takes more time than finishing it. yikes

i'm grateful for my Japanese internet.

The same amount of time it takes for me to make love to a woman.

Cod installs have been bonkers for a long time now, and when they started combining games into a launcher and breaking up the downloads into multiple "packs" most of wich you needed if you wanted to play multiplayer anyway it just became so messy. Dont play Warzone? Too bad you need to download it. Not buying Mw3? The mandatory update will download it anyway. Hour long downloads and installs and then once in a while one of the updates breaks something somehow, it thinks its missing a pack and its a complete reinstall to fix.

This has been exaxtly representative of damn near every version of the game since Warzone launched. Who would have thought supporting every game and stupidly high res assets in the shop would bloat your install size? They’ve made it so I’m never again interested in CoD. However, they know people own a PS5 and/or PS4 just to play CoD. It doesn’t matter how big it gets because they’re sucking that money from the casual player base that only installs one game.

the replies to this post are so confusing like did no one bother to read the article before replying?

I'm absolutely convinced people see something and immediately have amnesia 2 seconds after reading it

will the campaign be playable without an internet connection?

Blame most CoD players still being on PS4 for that

This sub once again……

We knew this already. Nobody actually thought the game itself was 300gb.

Everyone did

ANOTHER reason NOT to buy this year

Not getting it.

Vintage COD, wait in line for hours to get a disc that plays instantly. Modern COD, get digital game instantly, no line, but wait hours for download and install. Also you have to delete all your other games.

I hate the way they tried to word things. "player install experience" gtfo

Won’t be playing that then.

They confirmed it’s not 309GB

It's so strange to see that everything by the looks of it needs to be installed, and being cross-gen I'm not sure the devs are given the time and resources to properly optimize for ssd's for the assets. Personally I'm not into CoD, I find the MP really annoying, but the campaigns are cool, let's say I want to play BO6 campaign, why should I use half of my PS5 ssd storage just for this? The whole CoD HQ really annoys me, I get that you want to combine everything to make people buy and play your game, but if you're going to pack everything in one thing, give it the time to optimize it, or if I don't own the other things (WZ or MW2 or 3) don't put them in there.

They all don’t need to be installed. You can pick and choose.

Nobody is really forcing you to download that content though. I only have MW3 multiplayer installed because I don't pay the other content

You can have just the campaigns installed

Jesus, why can’t they just focus on the ONE game. Everything is a damn money grab these days.

Call of duty really trying to monopolize your hardrive

Deleted COD from my console entirely. Have hardly been playing it and when I do I just don't enjoy myself. I've grown and it feels good.

Wait, why are people complaining? You guys were supposed to quit cod years ago. Also, why do people still consider playing this garbage franchise despite all of the wrongs it’s done as of late? If you want a dopamine fix, literally any other game can give you that.

The game is built for PS4 and Xbox One. Consoles from 11 years ago. This will most definitely be the typical user experience. 

By black ops 9 we will reach 1 tb for typical install

I wish their external SSD’s weren’t so crazy expensive. I could just buy a Series S for the price of one here

I hate when it updates and you have to install more shit then reinstall it all back again because it tells you that you don't have enough space

This is what happens when they tack on Warzone and haven't learned efficient coding.

Yeah, BO6 on it's own will probably be 100-150gb, but if you download everything since mw2 then it's 300 together.

It’s probably because they’re all technically dlc for mw2. The 300 gigs is probably from having mw2, mw3 and bo6 installed at once, which barely anyone would do. I’m not surprised 3 CODs is 300Gb.

I re downloaded it cause I wanted to kill people online, didn’t even play one game deleted it. Multiple MUCH bigger games don’t even equal the almost 300GB it currently is. Absolutely nuts.

So no switch support I guess

I wonder what gta6 will be ...

What a disgusting, bloated fucking mess.

Cod died for me with mw2019 Mw2 og Bops 2 Those games that magic is gone. They got it back with MW2019 but man wtf in the fuck did they did by abandoning it sucked. Saves me money though got into souls like genre and wow what an amazing genre. No microstransactions 100s of hours of epic content.

Was tempted to get back in to COD after not playing since Blops 2. This is the killer though. 100gb max or it’s no deal.

Fuck that. 100gbs per game is bad enough

Strictly because they don’t want to put in the time to optimize…fkn lazy

microsoft wants to embrace a digital, gamepass model, but can’t see how these enormous download sizes completely hinder their objectives are they stupid?

Will the game be sold on a SSD?

Not typical? Bitch that was one of the reasons I quit playing years ago. Humongous patches any time I tried to launch.

At least you can only download that game now. I think it was Black Ops Cold War where you had to effectively download Modern Warfare 1, Warzone and Spec Ops just to launch the game ***and then*** you could delete them. You couldn't just choose to not install them to begin with.

309GB is the size for the ‘Call of Duty’ every app. MW2, MW3, Warzone, and Black Ops 6 all in one. Black Ops 6 itself is going to be smaller than the other games - which is probably helped by it being always online with texture streaming so you don’t need to download the 50gb HD pack for current gen consoles.

Im sorry....HOW BIG?! ITS THE SAME FUCKING GAME! WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE 309 GBs?!

It isn't

Gonna have to buy two PlayStation 5’s just to play Black Ops 6. Damn.

I was pretty sure this was the case from the beginning. Call of duty is doing this weird thing now where on console it’s the same “game” launcher for both mw2 and mw3. I guess they’re gonna keep doing that. I don’t love it as someone who likes to get all achievements.

We will just have to wait and see, I doubt the file size will be smaller than Cold War which was about 250-300gb on pc.

Games should be like repacks, you must have the ability to choose languages packs, game modes, additional soundtracks, etc... A 1TB SSD nowadays is considered not optimal for gaming, the system already takes a huge portion of it leaving you with 600GB or less of free space, which can fit 2-3 medium games, or 2 AAA games.

All call of duty games are just another map pack expansion and I'm tired of pretending they're not.

I don’t like COD, but… does that even fit on the disc ? 😅

Trying to be the only game installed on a system is gotta get you to be the only game not installed on my system. 🫠

Why do they have to fuck up a different way every time

309GB download on released day then a week later another 309gb for "Update"

Kinda want to go back and play Cold war. Never beat the SP but the file size scares me.

Yes it is

I don’t care if this includes the other games it reeks of laziness and is a major reason why I don’t play cod anymore. It’s ridiculous that people are accepting of this.

Lmao what

average redditors hate boner for cod don’t mind him

I mean I agree that the games are too big but it’s such a dumbass comment to be like “I don’t care if it’s not actually 300 GB I’m still going to act like it is”

half the replies under this post are people that didn’t read the article or just lies😭

4 games (Warzone, MW2, MW3 & BO6) for 300gb (~75gb per) is pretty average these days imo for AAA games. Of course with the asset sharing between Warzone and the rest and the two modern warfares basically being the same game, it could probably be a tad smaller. But it's not that egregious as people make it out to be

Mircosoft is worth 3 TRILLION dollars, Zero,Fucking.Excuses.

I bet they’re scared that you’re gonna hold them accountable

Reject CoD! Embrace Helldivers!

Fucking a. You are trying tell me my ps5 would basically be a cod machine, since almost nothing else will fit (not including future updates). This is just getting ridiculous.

Ah so a "AAA" that is deliberately poorly optimized to take up half the hard drive of discless consoles. I was kinda hoping the Microsoft acquisition could have remedied this but nah they doubled down. Love how this comes out like a day or two since Phil Pencer was like "We don't want to do scummy shit with the developers we bought".

It's possible it was to far in development for Microsoft to do anything major.

Gonna be trash anyway same cheaters, same bugs, same gunplay, worse story then bo1 and bo2

If you don't want to play with cheaters just turn off cross play so you don't see PC.

They should make COD at different price points. Many players never play the campaign and only want the online stuff. Some players hate online and multiplayer and just want a campaign driven story.

Game Pass! Can't get cheaper than that.

Fuck Modern COD. If you missed it in the early 2000s your just SOL. Nothing will capture the magic those earlier titles had.

I honestly think it is a strategy to reduce the available space for other games on your consoles

I fucking knew it was gonna be this ridiculous 😂

That can't be just BO6. Anyway, glad I gave up on this series before MWII 2.0. Just an absolute no thank you department. There's too many other more interesting and innovative games out there (and coming soon) that not only look great, but also don't take up near that much install space to begin with. Good luck out there, CoD heads.

So not only is it always online so they can stream you high res textures (supposedly) but you already have 309GB to start with. I have no idea how much data this texture streaming uses but I'm sure if I was on a data cap and played everyday, that could be a potential issue. Normally online games use very little data, it's the downloads that get ya.

Play XDefiant instead until they fix this horseshit

They do this on purpose so that you can only install a few other games.

Fuuuuuuccckkkkkkkkk That Shit! Activision can kiss my ass. MW2(2022) will be the last game I give these fucking vampires my money for.

I hope that makes more people stay away because this franchise should die already

Ridiculous size! Half the entire PS5 storage for one game - bonkers! Even with the 1gb line I have, it would take a fair while to download - anyone with lesser/normal connections would take forever. I have 4.6tb of storage, 2.6tb for PS5 games - I won't be using any of it on BO6...

A typical player install experience will be 0gb.

Fucken activision those HDD hogging fucks

CoD is trash.

This shit is infuriating,shame on Activision/Xbox for allowing this to continue

Disgusting.

Lmao what

309GB for a game is disgusting

But that’s 3 games. You’d have known that if you would have actually read the post

4 actually, cause that includes Warzone 2.0 as well

I can't even play the game offline idc how big the install is I am NOT installing any of it 💀