Bilawal Bashir 
Call of Duty games have been hogging more and more storage space for years now and it seems Black Ops 6’s file size is so massive that many will have to turn their consoles into dedicated machines for that one game.
Black Ops 6 was revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase, with a whole sub-event dedicated to the game. The trailers and briefing by the developers showed off everything from a new movement system to how the campaign would change its core mission structure. Black Ops 6’s multiplayer will also ship with new maps for several modes, and zombies will return with two new maps right out of the gate.
Treyarch and Raven Software are seemingly cooking one of the best Black Ops games. But even if everything hits with Black Ops 6, it’s still going to have one big problem. Its file size is so huge that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players might have to empty their hard drives just to fit the game in.
What is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s file size?
Black Ops 6 will have a file size of 309.85 GB, making it the biggest Call of Duty game ever in terms of storage space.
The information comes from the Black Ops 6 page on Xbox.com. The size of Black Ops 6 on PlayStation 5 and PC has yet to be disclosed but it will likely be comparable.
Call of Duty players are used to the game taking up a significant portion of their console SSDs. Fans’ eyes popped when they saw that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s total file size at launch was over 230 GB. Black Ops 6’s file size doesn’t just expand that, it expands it by more than 30%.
For players with a 500 GB hard drive on an early-model PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, a 310 GB file size alongside the space that’s taken by the consoles’ operating systems will be significant enough that players may wind up only being able to fit in one other game. In fact, it’s possible that players with a basic hard drive may not be able to have games like Black Ops 6 and NBA 2K24 installed at the same time. Even if they do, they may have to uninstall the other game whenever a large patch needs to be downloaded.
Activision stated that the reason for the file size in Modern Warfare 3 was the carried-forward skins, the availability of all content from Modern Warfare 2, and the addition of new modes. With Black Ops 6 dropping skins from previous games and Modern Warfare 2’s content, it’s clear that there’s another culprit.
Why does Black Ops 6 take up so much space?
It’s unclear why Black Ops 6 takes up 310 GB of hard drive space, but this isn’t unusual for annually released series or long-running multiplayer games.
The culprit is often “spaghetti code” where the source code has different elements that are intertwined in awkward ways. As new things are added, they end up relying on other processes to function. Over time, this can prevent certain processes that are unnecessary from being removed, resulting in unnecessarily large file sizes.
Games can be kept lean with time and focus from developers but with publishers always scrambling to develop the next installment and constant layoffs across the industry, it’s hard to do so. It’s even worse for Call of Duty, with four different studios developing it at all times. This unfortunately means that future Call of Duty games will likely be even bigger.
Black Ops 6 will also slot into Call of Duty HQ, the Activision launcher for modern Call of Duty games. There is no information on how the 309 GB will be distributed.
Call of Duty games let players pick and choose what to install, so players can remove some elements of the game. Multiplayer enthusiasts can download the multiplayer component and uninstall the campaign, while campaign lovers can remove Zombies, multiplayer, or both. However, whatever the case, players will need to do some housekeeping to install Black Ops 6.
