Credit: Activision Warzone 2 is almost here, along with the launch of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II Season 1, the addition of the new DMZ mode, and a wealth of new content to dive into. The new Call Of Duty Battle Royale free game comes with the new Al Mazrah map, a brand new Battle Pass, and revamped game systems that include 2v2 Gulag matches, brand new Market Stations, and a collapsible circle that can be broken into two or three smaller circles. Pre-loading for Warzone 2 has now begun on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and PC via Battle.net and Steam. I’ve tested the preload and I’m running into a few hiccups which I’m currently working on with Activision. Basically, head to your platform’s storefront and search for Warzone 2. When it shows up, you should be able to simply hit the preload button and start installing. However, obstacles I have faced include:
On Steam, when I press preload, it just launches Modern Warfare II. This may mean that the game is already preloaded. I’m not sure! On PlayStation 5, when I search for Warzone 2 it doesn’t show up. Modern Warfare II appears, as do some packs for the original Warzone, but not Warzone 2.
However, you can go to this link which will take you to the Warzone 2 website where you can select your platform of choice and add the game to your library (in theory this should work!) For example this link it takes me directly to the PlayStation version of the game and gives me the option to add to my library. When I followed the steps from this link, I found out that on PlayStation, Warzone 2 shows up as Modern Warfare II. There is no separate game or icon or page for it. I was able to preload, but I can’t tell if it’s preloading the entire Modern Warfare II game (which I don’t own on PlayStation!) or just Warzone. However, the file size is 38.6 GB. More on that in a second. Speaking of file sizes, how much space does Warzone 2 require? I’m trying to get confirmation of the download size from Activision, but I’m seeing conflicting reports right now. For example, many outlets report that Warzone 2 will take up 115GB on Xbox and PlayStation, but when I preloaded the game on Xbox Series X, this is the screen I get when I go to manage the game: Warzone 2 installation size Credit: Erik Kain As you can see, here I’m showing Warzone 2 taking up 6.2GB. The combined footprint of Modern Warfare II’s campaign, Co-Op, Multiplayer and Warzone 2 is under 50GB. Meanwhile, I was able to see the preload size on Battle.net. I have Modern Warfare II installed on Steam and on the Warzone 2 page it says you need 125GB of space on your computer to install the game. However, on Battle.net, the preload requires just 17.4GB: Warzone 2 file size on Battle.net Screenshot: Erik Kain If Warzone 2 is only 6.2GB on Xbox and 17.4GB on Battle.net, I can’t imagine it’s 38.6GB on PlayStation, which suggests to me that there’s some “core” game that includes files that large for Modern Warfare II as well as Warzone 2 , and this also installs on my PlayStation 5 (where I really don’t have that much space! I’m just doing it for science!) It’s possible that this is just the initial preload size and there’s another big update on the way that will require a lot more hard drive space. I’ve asked for clarification and will update this post when I know more. All of this means we have limited information right now, but the actual preload isn’t that big as far as I can tell, ranging from 6.2GB on Xbox to 17.4GB on PC and 38.6GB on PlayStation, though it’s likely smaller there if you already have Modern Warfare II installed. Oh, and right now the Steam install of Modern Warfare II—presumably with Warzone 2 preloaded—is 55.45GB. I believe it was around 30GB at launch. So it’s possible on Steam that the Warzone 2 update was around 25GB, but I’m not entirely sure as updates between release and now could affect the base install size. Many mysteries! See you in the war zone this Wednesday! If everything goes according to plan and we don’t crash all the time, that is!
