Call of Duty: Modern Warfare takes up almost as much hard drive space as every 3DS game combined

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Every 3DS game on the eShop comes to 267GB, just a little more than Modern Warfare takes up on PC

Best 3DS games - Super Smash Bros. for 3DS
(Image credit: Nintendo)

New consoles and PCs come with a generous amount of hard drive space for installing your favourite games, but you can quickly run out of room by downloading just a few modern AAA titles. Of course, these games benefit from gorgeous graphics and gargantuan worlds compared to older games, but at a massive cost of hard drive space, so much so that you could store an entire library of games from an older machine for the same amount of space that one modern game requires. 

As spotted by Twitter user NCSmaster, if you were to download every single 3DS game from the eShop, together, they would be almost the same size as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Their tweet highlights an article by ArsTechnica from 2022 in which it states that Modern Warfare, together with Warzone, needs a total of around 250GB on PC. While the combined size of all 1,547 3DS titles, over $13,000 worth of games, is 267GB. Additionally, every Wii U game comes to 1.2TB, which, as Twitter user Jon Cartwright points out, "comes to the size of like 6 modern games".

This was discovered after one YouTuber, Jirard Khalil, aka "The Completionist", took it upon themselves to buy every single game on the Wii U and 3DS digital storefronts before they shut down for good on March 27. This meant purchasing 866 Wii U games and 1,547 3DS games. It took them a total of 328 days, 464 eShop cards, and cost $22,791.

"When a digital storefront shuts down or games get delisted, countless titles run that risk of being lost forever," Khalil explained in their YouTube video." That's when I got a stupid crazy idea 'what would it take to save all those Nintendo Wii U and 3DS games from being lost?'" 

As it turns out, it takes a lot of time, money, and effort, but in comparison to modern games, relatively little space. Khalil says that it was "absolutely worth it" and will now be donating the collection to the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of games.

See what great titles are on the horizon with our guide to new games 2023.

Anne-Marie Ostler
Anne-Marie Ostler
Freelance Writer

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and GamesRadar+. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.