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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 released today, and it is pulling in some serious numbers for many internet service providers.

According to EE, BT and Virgin Media O2, the game's launch and pre-load period has seen record traffic across each of the networks.

In a new press release, Virgin Media O2 stated on Wednesday 8th November, when the game was available to pre-load, its broadband network "hit 25.1Tbps at peak (8-10pm)".

The company noted Modern Warfare 3's spike was "a 22 percent increase on the peak traffic seen during this last week's return of Fortnite's original map" (as a quick reminder, Virgin Media is specifically talking about UK traffic here).

It's also worth noting that while there was more traffic for Modern Warfare 3, the file sizes for the Call of Duty sequel are a lot higher, contributing to the high data counts. That may explain the high internet usage in comparison to Fortnite's recent record numbers of concurrent players.

Meanwhile, in a separate press release, EE said its own Modern Warfare 3-related network peak "highlighted one of the highest traffic to customer ratios". This, it said, indicated that a large number of gamers were using the network.

It went on to state this spike (which like Virgin was also recorded since Wednesday) was the "biggest single game contribution to a broadband peak" for both EE and BT broadband.

It marked the second highest overall peak for the companies. The only other date to see higher traffic for EE and BT was earlier this year, on 15th February. No, this wasn't because of some strange Valentine's Day hangover. Rather, it was predominantly thanks to football. This date apparently saw the combined efforts of a Premier League "clash" between Arsenal and Man City, which was broadcast online, as well as multiple Champions League fixtures and the Call of Duty: Warzone Season 2 update boosting traffic.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 release sees UK's biggest-ever gaming traffic for internet service providers

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 released today, and it is pulling in some serious numbers for many internet service prov…

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Garibaldi]

Everyone downloading 200GB should be ringing warning bells for the amount of power required to service that sort of load. Activision killing the planet while I'm sat here paying 30p for a bag for loose fruit and veg to appease Greta

 

[Mr Moose]

the game's launch and pre-load period

Because it downloads over your MWII even if you haven't bought MWIII.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

3.1 million MB/s for anyone wondering

 

[sinnergy]

Buying Activision is really paying off for MS

 

[Gaiff]

>Start working on DLC
>Work on it for 18 months when AAA games take 5-7 years to make
>Running out of time, repackage it as a a sequel
>Sell it for the price of a AAA game
>Make more profits than most AAA games
>Laugh all the way to the bank as gamers ain't shit

 

[Gerdav]

It’s a propaganda piece, everyone who has either MW2 or just Warzone installed was forced to quite literally download MW3.

 

[Elysium44]

How did these games get so bloated? The original MW3 was 16GB. The graphics may be more detailed now but not proportionately to the size increase. CoD in its heyday never used to be about cutting edge graphics anyway, the fast-paced gameplay itself was the main attraction.

 

[Fake]

Digital is the future they said.

 

[BigLee74]

How did these games get so bloated? The original MW3 was 16GB. The graphics may be more detailed now but not proportionately to the size increase. CoD in its heyday never used to be about cutting edge graphics anyway, the fast-paced gameplay itself was the main attraction.

So you’re saying you would still be happy with 2009 level graphics because it’s all about the gameplay? Install MW3 today, and you’ll be surprised at how rubbish it looks by modern standards.

The textures, the amount and complexity of unique assets required for MP/campaign/zombies/Warzone - yeah it costs drive space unfortunately. It’s not rocket science.

To be fair though, you should be allowed to select what you want to install before it does a huge download - they could definitely improve that mechanism.

 

[Goalus]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

 

[Ozriel]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

People tend to skew digital for games they play for long stretches.

I prefer physical myself, but I make an exception for FIFA, for example.

 

[Thirty7ven]

New metric for success unlocked.

 

[Fake]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

Context matters.

 

[Elysium44]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

MW3 'physical' still requires a huge download. (If you try and install and play offline it literally won't work.)

 

[Mr Moose]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

With this game, it doesn't matter. I have the disc MWII, it downloaded MWIII over it without me even buying MWIII.

 

[Ben87fr]

So that's why my internet was fucked up yesterday ? Fuck you call of duty

 

[Hip Hop]

>Start working on DLC
>Work on it for 18 months when AAA games take 5-7 years to make
>Running out of time, repackage it as a a sequel
>Sell it for the price of a AAA game
>Make more profits than most AAA games
>Laugh all the way to the bank as gamers ain't shit

And it costs $69.99

 

[AngelMuffin]

How did these games get so bloated? The original MW3 was 16GB. The graphics may be more detailed now but not proportionately to the size increase. CoD in its heyday never used to be about cutting edge graphics anyway, the fast-paced gameplay itself was the main attraction.

I’m assuming 4K textures & additional game modes like Warzone, but yeah, it’s ridiculous.

 

[StereoVsn]

I’m assuming 4K textures & additional game modes like Warzone, but yeah, it’s ridiculous.

Well, it’s also full MW2 download, isn’t it? The whole thing even behaves like a DLC and everyone is still buying this shit.

 

[Kerotan]

Buying Activision is really paying off for MS

Their Azure servers are finally at capacity.

 

[AngelMuffin]

Well, it’s also full MW2 download, isn’t it? The whole thing even behaves like a DLC and everyone is still buying this shit.

Not sure, maybe but all of the recent CoDs have been over 100gb if you download everything.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

How did these games get so bloated? The original MW3 was 16GB. The graphics may be more detailed now but not proportionately to the size increase.

...uhh it's entirely proportional, RE5 in 2009 was 7GB, REm4ke is 70GB, you think textures are free?
In the 360 era all resolutions were low, because that's what the hardware allowed, remember that the 360 only had 512MB of ram, which is OS + engine memory + framebuffer.
This meant that a lot of textures were tiny, with "important objects" being at a max of 512x512 and everything else much lower.
Nowadays even a "4K textures pack" won't exclusively contain 4kx4k textures, because that's just absolutely massive and not every object needs such a huge texture, it's more used as a shorthand for "if you are using and UHD resolution, or have equivalent vram available, you can get a boost in detail with these higher res textures", but this could mean changing a 256x256 texture to 512x, or a 1kx to 2kx, however this quadruples the file size.

Now for the actual increase it's not just because textures now use higher base resolutions, it's also because there's more of them, back in the 360 days you could just only have a diffuse (colour) texture and that was all you needed, maybe a lightmap as well, but normal/height/spec maps weren't needed everywhere.
Now with physical based rendering your materials will have a lot of different channels that make use of different texture files, and on top of that, the objects themselves use more materials (in a complex object you'll need to break up the texture files into several ones to keep everything at the same level of detail).
So it's like an exponential increase in texture file size from nearly 20 years ago, and it's to be expected.
Then there's audio which acts similarly to textures when it comes to resolution, and it makes complete sense that games are 10x bigger now.

So when you have a game that has a lot of additional content (remember that all cosmetics from MWII carry over to MWIII), this file size is completely normal, there really isn't much you can do to reduce it.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Looks like physical games are on the decline, otherwise traffic wouldn't be so high.

Even though physical game sales are likely declining. In this case the disc contains barely any data so traffic would be high no matter the version you buy.

 

[Elysium44]

...uhh it's entirely proportional, RE5 in 2009 was 7GB, REm4ke is 70GB, you think textures are free?
In the 360 era all resolutions were low, because that's what the hardware allowed, remember that the 360 only had 512MB of ram, which is OS + engine memory + framebuffer.
This meant that a lot of textures were tiny, with "important objects" being at a max of 512x512 and everything else much lower.
Nowadays even a "4K textures pack" won't exclusively contain 4kx4k textures, because that's just absolutely massive and not every object needs such a huge texture, it's more used as a shorthand for "if you are using and UHD resolution, or have equivalent vram available, you can get a boost in detail with these higher res textures", but this could mean changing a 256x256 texture to 512x, or a 1kx to 2kx, however this quadruples the file size.

Now for the actual increase it's not just because textures now use higher base resolutions, it's also because there's more of them, back in the 360 days you could just only have a diffuse (colour) texture and that was all you needed, maybe a lightmap as well, but normal/height/spec maps weren't needed everywhere.
Now with physical based rendering your materials will have a lot of different channels that make use of different texture files, and on top of that, the objects themselves use more materials (in a complex object you'll need to break up the texture files into several ones to keep everything at the same level of detail).
So it's like an exponential increase in texture file size from nearly 20 years ago, and it's to be expected.
Then there's audio which acts similarly to textures when it comes to resolution, and it makes complete sense that games are 10x bigger now.

So when you have a game that has a lot of additional content (remember that all cosmetics from MWII carry over to MWIII), this file size is completely normal, there really isn't much you can do to reduce it.

MW3 is 12 years old, not 20. I was referring to the PC version requirements; the 360 version uses 7.5GB.

Take your patronising 'uhh' and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. The game now has 20 times the size requirement on console, it doesn't look 20 times better, that's the point. No need for your wall of text telling me what I already know.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

MW3 is 12 years old, not 20. I was referring to the PC version requirements; the 360 version uses 7.5GB.

Oh, so you're just a moron, I didn't say MW3 was 20 years old, I said it's an exponential increase in texture file size from nearly 20 years ago, in relation to the hardware it's running on, the 360 didn't suddenly get more ram when MW3 released, the same hardware constraints apply, but I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone with a modicum of intelligence..

Take your patronising 'uhh' and stick it where the sun doesn't shine

Clearly you need some patronising because your brain doesn't work if you write stupid shit like:

The game now has 20 times the size requirement on console, it doesn't look 20 times better

 

[adamsapple]

>Start working on DLC
>Work on it for 18 months when AAA games take 5-7 years to make
>Running out of time, repackage it as a a sequel
>Sell it for the price of a AAA game
>Make more profits than most AAA games
>Laugh all the way to the bank as gamers ain't shit

 

[Fake]

Next CoD will be 1TB.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Next CoD will be 1TB.

The premium ultimate all you can eat edition will come installed on a new SSD for $299

 

[Fake]

The premium ultimate all you can eat edition will come installed on a new SSD for $299

'Digital is the future' edition will be 2TB.

Will be no storage in the world capable of support western devs damage.

 

[adamsapple]

The premium ultimate all you can eat edition will come installed on a new SSD for $299

You know it's probably not a bad idea to go back to carts lol.

 

[TGO]

So you’re saying you would still be happy with 2009 level graphics because it’s all about the gameplay? Install MW3 today, and you’ll be surprised at how rubbish it looks by modern standards.

The textures, the amount and complexity of unique assets required for MP/campaign/zombies/Warzone - yeah it costs drive space unfortunately. It’s not rocket science.

To be fair though, you should be allowed to select what you want to install before it does a huge download - they could definitely improve that mechanism.

To be fair the game is 200gb for both MW2 & 3
and it was 190gb before which pretty much confirms it's all bloat

 

[Fabieter]

We deserve this.