An independent third party has verified that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is only 70 MB on the physical disc.
This means that even if you buy the disc, you will have to download Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 in full in your platform of choice. It’s already been confirmed that the game totals to 100 GB on PlayStation 5. On the other hand, if you preordered the game, you may already know the amount of storage space the game required based on your pre-download.
Furthermore, people who bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on disc are at a disadvantage, because they will always have to launch the game using the disc before they get to play the game. In contrast, if you chose to buy the game digitally, you can just load it directly on your platform of choice any time you wanted to.
This is just another case of the actual game not coming on the physical disc. It’s now an increasingly common practice in a time when video games are getting considerably bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, existing physical media like cartridges and Blu-Ray discs have not caught up fast enough to accommodate the larger sizes of these games.
However, it must be said that Ultra HD Blu-Rays can carry data to as much as 100 GB, and neither the PlayStation 5 nor Xbox Series X have been designed to use Ultra HD Blu-Rays, nor to be upgradable with Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc drives. Console companies can also choose to make their own unique and specialized disc formats. Nintendo did exactly this for the GameCube, Wii, and Wii U discs, and each of those consoles had small physical characteristics that made them distinctive.
There are several layers to this issue that the industry hasn’t found an acceptable solution for. For one, the egregious choice to not even use what space is found in the disc, makes them extremely costly in terms of their carbon footprint. There’s also the fact that it’s poor value for consumers, who do continue to buy physical with the expectation that the physical media will have the disc. It’s also spurious to sell this product knowing that consumers have that expectation, when they don’t warn their consumers well in advance.
While Activision Blizzard claims to pay attention to feedback, it’s when they make decisions like this that gamers feel that they do not pay attention to feedback at all. If the developers really could not make use of the disc to properly store the game or parts of it, the least they could do is not attempt to sell it in this format. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that Activision Blizzard will change these practices in the near future, so consider this you caveat emptor if you see that disc on sale in your nearest game store.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will release for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on both Steam and Battle.net on October 28, 2022. We definitely do not recommend you buy this game on physical disc.
Source: VideoGamesChronicle
