Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Is Frustratingly Large for PS5 SSDs

A game’s file size should not need to be spoken about this much. And yet, here we are, discussing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s memory footprint for the umpteenth time.

Since the launch of Warzone, Call of Duty games have consistently gotten heavier. While many can say that the memory specs are justified, the free-to-play Battle Royale is only one chunk of the entire game.

If you have Warzone and all the other CoD features installed, then the chances that you’ve had to say goodbye to a few of your other games are high.

Until recently, it seemed that this would be a problem exclusive to previous-gen consoles, as Activision has been working to reduce the memory asks of CoD games. But it has become clear that these issues will continue to be around for new-gen consoles as well.

As pointed out by Redditor switchondem, Black Ops Cold War in its entirety now occupies 219.8GB on PS5’s SSD. That is close to 33% of the 667.2 GB of storage on the console.

Just imagine if all games on PS5 were this large. It would basically mean having only three games on the console for extended periods.

Thankfully, our technological overlords have not deemed it so. Three of PS5’s biggest exclusives, Returnal, Demon’s Souls, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, come in much lighter at 56.15 GB, 52 GB, and 33 GB, respectively.

While file sizes for CoD remain exorbitant, there are some measures that you can take to make things easier for your drives.

Activision has not been too successful in cutting down file sizes so far, but it has added the ability to uninstall individual modes that you don’t play. This can help in significantly reducing the game’s size.

Sony upgraded the PS5’s firmware to include external storage support a few months ago, allowing players to store PS5 games on an external drive.

This would solve internal storage woes if players could play the games from their external storage drives, but unfortunately, that is not the case. If you want to play a PS5 game, it must be a port of your console storage.

As Sony’s internal storage expansions are on the way, let’s hope this problem is a thing of the past soon.

About Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War

Published by Activision and developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is the seventeenth instalment in the Call of Duty franchise.  The first-person shooting game is available on PlayStation 4/ 5, Xbox One/ Series X/S and PC.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War features a campaign storyline, multiplayer as well as the infamous zombie mode. Inspired and set in the events of the Cold War, players will be back to the early 80s when Russia and America, along with their allies, were always on the move to gain hegemony over one another.

By playing as CIA officer Russel Adler, your mission is to prevent a Soviet agent named Perseus who’s on a mission to torment the United States and make Russia a superpower.