With each generation of video game consoles, games continue to get bigger and better. Worlds are teeming with detail, and continue to stretch beyond the horizon. Character models are intricately detailed, and the sheer amount of quests and content for players to work their way through has crept up into the hundreds of hours to complete. So here, we’re looking at the 15 biggest games of all time, ranked by their install size.
A quick note here, to save this from being a very repetitive list of Call of Duty titles, we’ve bundled most of those together. Where possible, we’ve also explained why these games are so huge and on what platforms their install sizes are going to dominate your hard drive. Spoilers: it’s mainly PC!
This post was updated and is accurate as of May 11, 2023.
15. Gears 4 – 117 GB
Who’d have guessed that it’s not The Coalition’s most recent release in the Gears franchise that’d make this list, but Gears 4 instead.
Gears 4 was the first entry to shift the focus away from Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad, instead looking to Kait Diaz, Del and J.D. Fenix (Marcus’ son) to take the reigns of the series.
With the usual bombastic campaign, tactical multiplayer and some major changes to the fan-favorite Horde mode, Gears 4 could keep COG heads entertained for hundreds of hours.
Alas, all of those chainsaw bayonets and Boomshots come at a cost to your hard drive space. Gears 4’s 117 GB file size is a whole 12 GB larger than Gears 5‘s on a Series X, but it does still look mighty good to this day!
14. Borderlands 3 – 116 GB
Borderlands 3 is one of the most stylish and silky smooth first-person shooters you can get your hands on right now. Oh, and it’s also filled with toilet humor, which you’ll either love or hate. Personally, Claptrap’s musings never fail to give me a good ol’ chuckle.
As a pretty expansive game already with tens of hours of content to work your way through in the main game, the install size was already pretty big. However, the DLC expansions such as Psycho Krieg, Bounty of Blood, Fantastic Fustercluck, and Moxxi’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot have only gone on to beef up the install size to the rather gargantuan 116 GB. If you can’t get enough of the cell-shaded shooter action, though, it’s a small price to pay.
13. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition – 120 GB
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is the remake of BioWare’s epic sci-fi RPG trilogy that fans had literally been begging for for the best part of a decade. Finally, in 2020 EA and BioWare caved and we got to slip into the shoes of Commander Shepard once again as we captained the Normandy through the vast expanses of space.
With three massive RPGs in one convenient package, all wrapped up in 4K textures, improved lighting effects, audio tracks and many more cosmetic improvements, it’s not all the surprising that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition weighs in at 120 GB. Just think, it could have been a whole lot worse had they tried to shove Andromeda in there, too.
12. Modern Warfare 2 (2022) – 121.3 GB
Oh, look! Despite Activision claiming that the Call of Duty development teams were working on condensing the annual installments down into much more palatable install sizes, 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 (that’s a lot of 2’s… 2) still manages to nab a spot here. Weighing in at a rather enormous 121.3 GB on Xbox Series X, the game’s still got some way to go for us not to be tutting every time we need to free up some space and see it hogging all that room on our storage.
That being said, there is a fair enough reason for all those sweet gigabytes being snaffled up. The game has a campaign sporting stunning 4K visuals, a multiplayer mode with an ever-increasing amount of maps, game modes and weapons, and even a Spec Ops mode for some fun co-op times.
11. Rainbow Six: Siege – 131 GB
Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege may have released back in 2015, but that hasn’t stopped it from remaining one of the most popular online games today. The tactical shooter’s roster of Operators, maps and features has grown exponentially since then, and with a whole host of texture packs that can be added to make the game look substantially prettier on PC, its install size can balloon up to the rather hefty 131 GB noted here.
You can bet your bottom dollar, too, that its file size will only continue to grow as Ubisoft continues to support it with more content to satiate fans appetite for tactical team-based antics.
10. Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 137 GB
Given the sheer amount of content The Master Chief Collection packs in, its 137 GB file size is actually fairly palatable.
You’re getting Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach and Halo 4 all with a number of visual improvements and the multiplayer modes packed-in for good measure.
If you’re running an Xbox Series X, it’s possible to experience Master Chief’s various adventures in up to 4K resolutions at 120 FPS.
Reduced load times, adjustable FOV, and split-screen make it the complete package for any Halo fan, and with new Seasons bringing more cosmetics for multiplayer fans, the 126 GB is a worthwhile sacrifice for all that content.
9. Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition – 148 GB
Noctis and the lads made their way to PC with Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition back in 2019. The Windows Edition of the title included the base game, plus all four of its separate DLCs, enhanced visuals and improved performance (as you’d expect from a PC port).
To be precise, it’s high-res 4K textures, HDR compatibility and ultra high graphics options. You’ll also get all of the DLC and bonus items, as well as a handful of refinements since the title’s original release on consoles.
All of those tasty 4K dishes you’ve been cooking up at camp take up some serious space on your system, with the Windows Edition taking up 148 GB. Better get a new hard drive!
8. Red Dead Redemption 2 – 150 GB
7. Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) – 150 GB
Asobo Studios’ Microsoft Flight Simulator was not only one of the best games to release in 2020, but also one of the biggest game installs of all time.
To just get started in the game, you’re looking at a 150GB install, that’s after you’ve downloaded a 1GB initial file to begin the hefty installation process. On top of that, any additional mods, aircraft, region packs or airports that you have the option to install on top of this can push that file size up even more.
It might seem like a massive file size, but remember Microsoft Flight Simulator allows you to fly around a high-quality rendition of Earth. An entire digital planet distilled down into 150GB… nice.
I’d be remiss not to mention all of the additional mods you can add to Microsoft Flight Simulator, too. Some of these use incredibly high-quality assets which will only balloon that install size up further. So, you could say the sky’s the limit when it comes to how many gigabytes it’ll take up… anyone? No? We’ll see ourselves out!
6. Forspoken – 150 GB
While Forspoken’s gameplay may have divided critics and fans alike, one thing that pretty much everyone can agree on is just how beautiful the game looked running on next-gen consoles and powerful PC components. From Frey’s character model look uncanny valley levels of realistic, through to even the most minute details of its fantasy world being brought to life, and a plethora of particle effects exploding on your screen in combat, Luminous Productions packed a lot in here.
Of course, all those assets have to live somewhere, and so Forspoken takes up a sizable 150 GB on PC. Given it’s not the biggest game in terms of content on this list, that might come as a little surprising. But spend an hour or two in its world and you’ll see where all that storage space has been spent!
5. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – 155 GB
It appears as though 2023 is the year of the chonky game, as following on from Forspoken’s January release in the year was Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in April. With a multitude of planets to explore in typical Metroidvania style, jaw-droppingly detailed cutscenes and a fantastically-realized galaxy far, far away, Jedi: Survivor give the game even an hour of your time and it soon becomes clear why the game manages to steal 155 GB of storage on consoles and PCs alike.
As this is a single-player game that you can complete within 50 hours or so, at least you know that you’ll eventually get that storage space back when you’ve watched the credits roll.
4. Forza Horizon 5 – 156.6 GB
Playground Games’ open-world Forza Horizon games have always been our preferred titles in the series over Turn10’s more serious track-based racing sim Motorsport titles.
Just because the Forza Horizon series is more arcadey and less serious than its Motorsport counterpart, doesn’t mean it’s slouching in terms of the content offered or visual fidelity.
Forza Horizon 5, in fact, is one of the prettiest games you can play on your Xbox Series X right now, with stunning native 4K visuals, silky smooth 60FPS, and the most detailed vehicle models in any racing game right now. You can even read the warning labels on the inside of doors!
The game was already giant enough, but the Hot Wheels and Rally Adventure expansions only bump that up further, to the point it’s now taking up 156.6 GB on the Series X. For the best racing game on the console, though, that’s a small price to pay.
3. Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War – 175 GB
Activision’s Call of Duty series’ file sizes have been slowly creeping up with each annual release. The latest from Treyarch Studios, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, continues this trend.
With a single-player campaign, multiplayer, Zombies, ray-tracing assets, and high-quality textures for the Series X, the game is currently hogging 175 GB on my system.
It might seem like a ridiculous amount of space to take up, but that may be a little unfair.
You’re getting three different game modes, each with high-quality textures, all running on an engine that enables performance at a locked 60 FPS (or higher if you’ve got the display and right HDMI).
We’d still rather Activision and its rotation of Call of Duty developers found a means of compressing that file size down a bit, when the games look and run as good as Cold War does on Series X, feels that little bit more justified.
Editor Note: While we’re aware that a number of other Call of Duty games have file sizes surpassing 100 GB and therefore belong on this list, we thought we’d make it a more interesting read for you by surmising them all below:
- Infinite Warfare – 101 GB
- Black Ops 3 – 113 GB
- Modern Warfare (2019) – 175 GB (Campaign, Multiplayer, Spec Ops)
2. Quantum Break – 178 GB
I love how Quantum Break’s still kicking it in this list five years after its initial release. A purely single-player experience, Quantum Break follows the story of Jack Joyce as he investigates a time travel experiment gone wrong.
There were some sharp visuals (for the time) and some great physics and time-manipulation-based mechanics that obviously requires a far few gigs to get working seamlessly.
It was Quantum Break’s merging of video games and its TV episode-style live-action cutscenes that really padded out the file size. These episodes provided even more context to the story, and would change depending on the actions made in-game, so many scenes had to be shot multiple times.
All of this culminates in not only one of the coolest game/ TV experiments to-date, but also a rather chonky 178 GB install on a Series X.
1. ARK: Survival Evolved – 400 GB
ARK: Survival Evolved somehow manages to blow every other game’s install size out of the water in comparison. Somehow, it manages to weigh in at 400 GB once you include a number of texture packs, expansions, and an odd way of file management on the developer’s part.
Essentially, the developer has failed to make a common repository for objects. That means every DLC has all of the dinosaurs, plants, water, clouds and other objects and models in them. So, rather than just having one Dodo model, you have it seven times. Now, do that with thousands of files and voila, you end up with frankly unreasonable 400 GB install size for ARK.
This does involve you having all of the free and paid DLC installed. Add any more mods on, and you’ll balloon it up even further. First person to make a 1 TB installation of ARK wins!
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