Activision has announced a change to the way they manage downloads on Call of Duty Hub. Yes, it’s finally fixed.
As explained in a new blog post on the Call of Duty website called “Optimizing the Call of Duty Experience: A Roadmap to Black Ops 6 Launch,” they explain that the hub is now being fixed so that you will only have to download the game that you want to play. And that’s for all the platforms.
Even better, they are separating Call of Duty: Warzone from the default downloads. So, if you don’t really play Call of Duty: Warzone and just like to play each annual game, you can choose to download only that game, and not have Call of Duty: Warzone in your platform at all.
They have also clarified some earlier misconception about texture streaming. The intent of this system is to minimize the amount of storage you will need for each new Call of Duty game that releases. So each game is now programmed in such a way that you get a default low quality texture as part of the default download. And then, as you connect to Activision’s servers, they will stream the high quality textures in.
This is all great stuff, but I can’t help wondering if there’s more they could do there. For example, it’s possible that some players would be willing to use more storage to have the high quality textures be rendered natively on their monster PC rigs. Subsequently, there may be players who will want to play only the story campaign, or the multiplayer modes, of each new Call of Duty. Would it be possible for those players to get to choose to only download those parts of the game that they are playing?
Well, maybe that’s something we should ask them for the future, as they will still have to implement the changes they have promised. And to do that, gamers who already have Call of Duty Hub will have to download an additional program via an update this coming August 21.
PlayStation 5 users will have to download this update in four chunks, while other platforms will get a single large download. Apparently the only difference with the PlayStation 5 version is in the backend, and won’t make a difference in the end result.
This large download will reorganize your files, uninstall Call of Duty: Warzone, and implement the texture streaming technology. When it’s done, Call of Duty Hub will be considerably smaller, and the upcoming download for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be smaller.
Activision hasn’t told us how big this big uninstaller update will be, and how big Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be either. Apparently, they’re still working this out even now. Hopefully they can give that update before next week, even if it’s just in a tweet.
But, if they can pull this off, it will be a huge relief to their large community, who may not have large storage available. Fans have been trying to figure this out with datamining for weeks now. As it turns out, they really wouldn’t have guessed what Activision was really doing, until Activision finally said it.
