There’s a very good reason for why Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III has such a huge download size.
The whole issue came about when gamers, including those who own older Call of Duty games and have Call of Duty HQ, found they were downloading large amounts of data, even when they hadn’t bought the game yet.
We can confirm this from CharlieIntel’s tweets about this topic:
“The Modern Warfare 3 Campaign pre-load is available on Xbox. Check your Manage Game installs. The Campaign is 51GB.
Note: The new Call of Duty HQ update on Xbox today appears to auto include the Campaign download, which is why, even if you don’t own MW3, the Game Install says you have Campaign Installed.”
PlayStationSize reported the different file sizes for different parts of the game as well:
“Call Of Duty Modern Warfare IIl
– HQ, Version 1.30 (01.030.000)
PS4 : 73.129 GB (Update Size : 7.269 GB)
PS5 : 89.019 GB (Update Size : 5.865 GB)
– Campaign (Pack 1+2)
– Pre-Load Now Available
– Launch : November 2
PS4 : 35.097 GB
PS5 : 50.984 GB
– MP/Zombie
– Pre-Load : November 8
– Launch : November 10
PS4 : 18.5 GB (MP) (Zombie)
PS5 : (Editor’s note – PlayStationSize doesn’t have this data)”
CharlieIntel later figured out that Call of Duty HQ can download as much as 200 GB data, but you don’t have to keep all of it. As they put it on Twitter:
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III does not take up a full 200GB on your console/PC. You can uninstall any of the game packs you want too. The base install of Call of Duty HQ is at 50GB, and each pack is an add on to that. You can delete any pack to reduce the file size.”
To round this all up, the official Call of Duty account explained the situation on their own Twitter:
“#MW3 is almost here. In preparation, we would like to provide an update on file sizes which are larger than last year 👇
This is due to the increased amount of content available Day 1, including open world Zombies, support for item carry forward from #MW2, as well as map files for current Call of Duty: Warzone. (Note: as part of our ongoing optimization efforts, your final installation size will be actually smaller than the combined previous Call of Duty experiences).
You can manage your Call of Duty files in the ‘manage files’ section of the COD HQ launcher menu. This includes the ability to uninstall specific content you are not actively playing.
We’ll be sharing more information regarding launch in the coming days.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be released on November 11, 2023, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows, on Steam and Blizzard.net.
