Gears of War 4 on disc needs an 11GB day-one patch, plan your launch marathons accordingly

Be advised, non-connected and/or impatient Gearheads: physical copies of Gears of War 4 will require an additional 11GB of data to be downloaded before you can start playing. So sayeth Gears Grand Poobah (and The Coalition studio head) Rod Fergusson in a recent Tweet:

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Why couldn't Microsoft just put that last little bit on the disc, too? It wouldn't fit. Standard dual-layer Blu-ray discs can only store up 50GB of data.

If you buy the game digitally, you can preload the 54.6GB package right now and start playing almost instantly on October 11. And you'll get a free copy of Gears 4 for Windows 10 (which you can also pre-load now) since it's an Xbox Play Anywhere game. Skipping the disc for big Xbox One titles is a pretty compelling proposition these days.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.