New Call of Duty game reduces bandwidth-intensive download size

If you need more storage for the October installment of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, you may want to hold off on upgrading your hard drive. Activision announced in a blog post that the download size of this year's installment of the popular game series will be significantly smaller, and has made other changes ahead of the October 25 release date.

The biggest change, especially for users wary of a gigantic download, is that Call of Duty: Warzone, a battle royale game that was bundled with the main game, will be split into its own download. Players of the free-to-play game will still be able to access the game, but it will not be part of the download for Black Ops 6, which could save you up to 130GB of hard drive space.

Other changes in this year's edition include a revamped user interface and a new system that streams some of the game's graphic textures on demand, rather than forcing users to download them all in advance.

What is the file size of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6?

Although we won't know for sure until October, Activision has confirmed that it will be much smaller than 300GB.

The changes ahead of Black Ops 6 also include a revamped file organization system. For players, that means updates on PlayStation 5 will be split into four parts. Activision says that for other platforms, including Xbox and PC, the Call of Duty experience will be updated with a single download.

An early access beta test of the new game will begin on August 30th and last until September 4th, and there will be an open beta from September 6th to 9th.