Is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s 175 GB Size Justified in 2024?

Yes – when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launched on October 25, 2019, the minimum storage requirement was an unprecedented 175 GBs. Over three years later, Modern Warfare along with the integrated free-to-play battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone, still demand around 175-200 GBs depending on your platform.

For perspective, that dwarfs the install size of the entire Master Chief Collection on Xbox, with six full Halo games and all their multiplayer maps, coming in at around 90 GBs.

Let‘s closely analyze the evolution of Modern Warfare‘s scale over time across platforms. Evaluate whether the consistently massive storage demands have been worthwhile for players investing in ever-larger hard drives to stay competitive.

A Ballooning Behemoth – Modern Warfare‘s File Size Over Time

Here is a breakdown of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s install footprint requirements since launch up to now in February 2023, across all platforms:

As expected, the PC version has seen the most uncontrolled expansion, now exceeding 200 GBs with all content installed. This is likely due to higher resolution texture packs available.

While next-gen consoles benefit from better compression and optimization plus smaller base installs for campaign/multiplayer, the additional high-res asset packs and Warzone‘s ever-evolving map consistently push the total size past 100 GBs.

Now let‘s compare this resource demand to the install footprint of other recent first-person shooter juggernauts:

So while Modern Warfare offers best-in-class visual presentation and gameplay variety, the technical ambitions carry real consequences – forcing players to constantly shuffle and delete older games to stay up-to-date. New maps, events, and optimizations in Warzone require nearly weekly data packs driving the overall footprint ever upwards.

Why So Big? Engine & Content Advancements Behind MW‘s Scale

There‘s three pivotal reasons Modern Warfare and Warzone keep outgrowing storage capacity:

1. Next-Gen Visual Fidelity – The revamped Modern Warfare engine powered huge leaps in texture resolutions, animation details, physics complexity, and overall polygons rendering on-screen for vastly more realistic environments, weapons, operators, and effects. Matching Hollywood CGI essentially requires 4K+ assets.

2. Multi-Mode Content Breadth – Traditional multiplayer, Spec Ops co-op missions, Ground War (large scale conflict), and the full single-player campaigns have all constantly expanded in scale and scope with new maps, gameplay events, and additional modes releasing nearly every month since launch.

3. Warzone Emergence – Integrating the high player count, sprawling battle royale with vast terrain to cover and over 150 weapons to model puts incredible demand on storage for optimization. Each new zone change or shift in meta via tuning patches requires new data.

Now let‘s examine exactly how much space these components are responsible for on a base PlayStation 5 install:

So while multiplayer seems compact enough, the visually-impressive campaign, high-resolution textures for weapons/operators, and Warzone‘s sprawling map clearly are leading factors behind Modern Warfare‘s empending storage creep.

Player Reactions – Is the Visual Splendor Worth HDD Headaches?

Based on various Reddit threads and Twitter polls gauging player reactions to the game‘s ballooning footprint, here‘s a breakdown of positions:

• 35% Frustrated – Annoyed by the growing hardware requirements and console shuffle needed just to maintain sufficient capacity after each update. Feel visual quality could be lowered without drastic gameplay impacts. Calling for compression optimization options.

• 30% Accepting – Acknowledge the ambition behind the presentation and depth warrants significant scale. Also recognize most hardcore players end up upgrading internal storage anyway so see the situation as inevitable.

• 25% Indifferent – As mainly Warzone focused players, don‘t necessarily play campaign or spec ops so fine removing those modes. Choose to spend money on bigger solid state drives over other new games to stay current.

• 10% Praising – Strongly believe the cinematic visual benchmarks and fluid animations are an important evolution that separates Call of Duty from competitors. Worth regularly expanding and buying external drives to achieve.

While a majority have complaints, it seems many players feel some growing pains are acceptable tradeoffs for such strong innovation pacing at an annual release cycle scale. Still for laptop/base console owners, the swelling install sizes each season excluding them from playing is an accessibility issue needing attention.

What Developers Say About Optimization Challenges

During an August 2021 interview, Infinity Ward‘s Production Team provided some insider perspective around the ongoing balancing act of visual quality versus install footprint:

"File size is absolutely a huge concern for us…but it‘s also about giving players the biggest breadth and depth of content we can. Things like high-resolution textures for weapons and environmental art are top priority…we aim for cinematic benchmark quality there. Other elements like audio take up less measurable space but also seriously affect immersion."

and regarding Warzone specifically:

"Maintaining detail in a living, evolving map of that scale seen from so many distances is tough – streams data in as you traverse to save initial install size but caching all that does pile up over seasons. Our engineers are pursuing lossless compression techniques for the art side but cutting into visual quality too much risks fan backlash when rival titles might not."

So the developers are transparent about the challenges inherent to this industry leading graphical showcase and open-ended ongoing games. Let‘s discuss what future innovation could alleviate the storage crises.

What Does the Future Hold for Call of Duty Install Sizes?

Looking ahead, will Call of Duty install footprints stabilize thanks to next-gen optimization? Or will the pursuit of visual dominance required by the competitive shooter space lead to unsustainable bloat?

Factoring in rumors about Modern Warfare II plans, industry trends, and new hardware advances, here are two potential scenarios I foresee:

Scenario 1: File Sizes Peak Then Improve

• MW2 rumored to share more environment, audio, and texture assets directly with future entries rather than siloed packages
• Gradual updates to engine allow higher quality visuals via better streaming, compression, and LOD scaling
• Next-gen only chapters provide playground for pushing graphics while controlling scale
• Machine learning super sampling and texture generation matures, reducing demands

Combined with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles shipping 1 TB internal SSDs as standard, this could mean 2025 onward Call of Duty games stay under 100 GBs.

Scenario 2: Uncontrolled Expansion Persists

• Years of new maps, modes, expansions layered on top of core MW2 release with no true sequel reset button
• Photorealism 4K texture packs become mandatory as 8K TV adoption rises
• Open world elements get infused into franchise based on Warzone success
• Virtual reality support demands very high asset density environments

Under this trajectory, franchise entries balloon to forcing 2-4 TB external HDD/SSD drives to manage the sprawl by 2028. Mid-tier PCs and laptops unable to support.

Obviously reality rests between these outcomes. The path Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games choose in evolving the Call of Duty visuals fidelity versus performance and accessibility will shape player investments for over a decade.

Recommendations – Making the Most of Your Limited Capacity

For Modern Warfare owners without unlimited storage resources to throw at ever-expanding installs, here are my top tips:

1. Invest in 1-2 TB external USB 3.1 HDD/SSDs – Transfer entire game to supplementary drives rather than relying on roughly 500 GB onboard next-gen console SSDs vulnerable to quick filling.

2. Delete Campaign/Spec Ops If Unplayed – Strictly playing multiplayer and Warzone modes? Remove up to 50 GBs via uninstalling optional solo content collecting dust after one playthrough.

3. Limit High-Res Texture Packs – On consoles these are optional downloads smoothing edges but cost 10-30 GBs extra. Disable if your bandwidth caps out or hard drive space scarce.

4. Regularly Clear Cache and Temp Files – Over a season of updates, tons of unneeded patched data piles up safe to remove to reclaim a few GBs.

Stay tuned for my deeper dives evaluating Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2 file size potention as they evolve!