You can pre-download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone's massive 36GB Season 5 update - on PS4 only
Marching on.
Another Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone season, another massive update - but this time you can pre-download... on PlayStation 4 only.
I grabbed the 36.182GB update last night, and this morning it was sat on my PS4 with a 7am 5th August install lock - that's the date Season 5 of Warzone and Modern Warfare goes live.
Pre-downloading is welcome, of course, but unfortunately you can't do it on PC and Xbox One. Why? According to Activision: "Xbox does not support the ability to pre-download. Similarly, Battle.net does not currently support pre-downloads for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or Warzone."
This is an odd statement, when you consider Xbox One and PC can pre-download entire games. Perhaps it's just updates it doesn't work with?
According to Activision, to pre-download on PS4 you need to store the previous update from June and have space for the August update: "Approximately 120GB of free space will be required for the pre-download," reads the support website." To be clear, you're downloading 36GB, not 120GB, but you'll need a lot of space for it.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone has a history of mammoth updates, and the overall install footprint of the game is close to a whopping 200GB.
But developer Infinity Ward has worked to reduce the game's install footprint with recent updates, and this Season 5 download will do the same.
Paul Haile, production director on Modern Warfare at Infinity Ward, tweeted to say the update includes all the new content for the season and optimises the game's asset packs. So, while this means the download is big, the overall size of the game will actually shrink on consoles after the patch is downloaded.
"It's a priority for us to keep working on reducing the overall size of MW & WZ on your hard drives, but at the same time also delivering new seasons for everyone to enjoy," Haile said. "We'll continue to work on this and keep pushing space reductions out with future updates."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone Season 5 finally blows the roof off the stadium on the Warzone map, and adds a moving train with loot and turrets.