There used to be a time, not so long ago, when purchasing the physical edition of a game actually meant something. Sometimes you’d find bonus content, a map or two, and most importantly, the game itself.
Activision doesn’t seem to have gotten that memo. Today, you can lay hands on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, both digitally and physically. Problem is, the physical version is empty. Well, that’s not true. It has 72MB worth of data on there, which is basically just an authenticator that lets you download the game digitally. And we haven’t even reached the worst part yet. The download is roughly 150GB – defeating the main purpose of buying the game physically.
“The numbers, Mason! Where are they?”
In fairness, the discs these games ship on aren’t quite capable of storing games that large. Sure, Activision could have split the game across two or three discs and sold them that way. But who wants that hassle? As annoying as it is, this was probably the right call. It would have been appreciated if at least one of the game’s modes shipped on the disc, letting you play while your download goes on in the background.
Read More: Sony wants to keep Call of Duty multi-platform and believes Microsoft’s offer was “inadequate”
At least this way, we’re all stuck downloading the game, disc or no disc. That still won’t stop those who are already Prestige Masters by the time we log on later this evening. But it will slow them down.
Besides empty discs, South Africans have another reason for avoiding the CoD: MWII disc version. Head over to your local game store, and you’ll see the same thing everywhere: R1,500 for the physical version of the game. No steelbook, an empty disc, and a basic-looking Call of Duty box for a game that costs R1,380 on the PlayStation Store. Maybe buy it digitally?
Source: TechCrunch