Call of Duty: Activision investigates huge Xbox update

The video-games company behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is investigating why some downloads of an update to the game are more than twice as large as expected.

Activision said the problem was affecting some Xbox users.

Some players have reported their consoles are downloading a file as large as 85GB.

In theory, that would take more than three hours to download on an average UK home broadband connection.

In practice, however, it takes much longer, according to users.

Although, others have said their update is as small as 33GB.

The update introduces new weapons, narrative video scenes, maps and bug fixes to the first-person shooter.

Once downloaded, it takes up only 4GB more storage than the previous version on the hard drive.

Even so, some players have expressed concern at the amount of disc space they are having to give up.

On Sony’s PlayStation 4, the installed game can now take up close to 200GB in total – about half disc space available on the basic version.

Owners can, however, delete some of the modes they do not play to free up storage for other games and media.

The update was originally scheduled to have been made available on 3 June but developer Infinity Ward said it had been held back until now to allow people to focus on voices calling for “equality, justice and change” as part of the US protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

Activision said the latest version of Modern Warfare had been its bestselling Call of Duty game to date, during a recent analysts briefing.

The company makes money from each season update as players can pay a fee to unlock new content rather than having to spend hours earning it via a series of in-game achievements.