Modern Warfare 3 has been officially confirmed to be of a similar size to recent Call of Duty titles, which shouldn’t be surprising given the increasing size of CoD games. However, what might catch your attention is that the base game itself occupies only 78GB. This figure increases substantially to 149GB if you decide to include the Call of Duty Headquarters launcher and Warzone, which many consider essential for the complete Call of Duty experience at this point. To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the size of Baldur’s Gate 3 and ten times larger than the 2011 version of MW3.
Activision’s recommendations for Modern Warfare 3 also suggest clearing up this storage space on an SSD, which would result in faster load times and other performance enhancements for this long-running FPS game.
That said, if you already have Call of Duty HQ and Warzone installed, you’ll only need to free up 78GB for the initial download. Additionally, specific content can be uninstalled if your interest lies solely in playing the multiplayer component of the game.
All of this information is available in Activision’s most recent blog post about Modern Warfare 3, which focuses on PC specifications and system requirements. Here is the complete list of requirements provided in the post:
If you’re eager to get all of this downloading sorted before launch, you can preload Modern Warfare 3 on November 1 if you’ve pre-purchased the game on either Battle.net or Steam. Preloading also gives you early access to the campaign on November 2, as opposed to the November 10 release date. The campaign starts where Modern Warfare 2 left off, with Captain Price and Task Force 141 going up against Vladimir Makarov.
Honestly, playing through the story more than a week in advance seems worthwhile, especially if you know that you’re buying the game for sure. Then, you can focus solely on multiplayer at launch.
Preloading for the official launch – everything outside of the campaign – starts on November 8, two days before you gain access to MW3 Zombies and multiplayer modes – so make sure you check out our list of all of the currently known MW3 guns to get ahead of the undead.