Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War install size requirement stealthily reduced by 90GB

Don't buy that extra SSD just yet—it looks like Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War won't eat up as much of our disk space as we previously thought. In a new blog post outlining preload times and download sizes, Activision snuck in a big amendment to the space required on PC, dropping it all the way from 175GB to 82GB required for the full game, at least at launch.

Keep in mind, Cold War's various graphical levels and "content packs" will affect that download size. If you're planning on playing the multiplayer and nothing else, you can skip the Campaign and Zombies download to slash the total size down. Playing on "Ultra Graphics" mode, presumably with 4K textures and other fancy bells and whistles, will greatly bloat the game's size.

It's possible that the previous size requirement was an estimate that included future updates, and that Activision reduced the requirement to just what will actually be there at launch, but we won't know that until sometime after launch.

Here's the full rundown of download sizes that (hopefully) won't change again before launch.

Cold War PC download sizes

• Multiplayer Only: 35GB
• Full Game: 82GB
• Full Game (Ultra Graphics): 125GB

Maybe I'm too acquainted with big games eating up my SSD in 2020, but I'm pretty happy with those numbers. I'm especially jazzed about the ability to delete parts of the game on PC, a feature that didn't come to Modern Warfare's PC version until last month. It's weird that this update has yet to be reflected on Cold War's official Battle Net page (it's still reading the incorrect 175GB figure). You'd think Activision would want to scream to the heavens about the good news.

Even more interesting is that Cold War on PC will total out to be smaller than its PS4 and Xbox One counterparts (95GB and 93GB respectively). The Ultra Graphics requirements on PC are also smaller than the required 133-136GB download on PS5 and Xbox Series X. It sounds like the Raven/Treyarch camp learned a lesson from the ongoing headaches with Modern Warfare. Though, to be fair, Cold War doesn't have to factor in Warzone's significant disk hunger.