Overview

• Arrowhead’s new tech blog pegs the PC install at around 150GB, about three times the PS5 and Xbox versions that run on SSD-only storage.
• The studio duplicates data to reduce HDD seek times and says removing it entirely would make HDD loading roughly 10 times slower.
• Squad drops wait for the slowest loader, so the team is retaining some duplication to avoid delaying entire groups.
• A mid-October update will clean out unused assets without noticeably shrinking size, and a medium-term plan to bundle very common assets targets selective de-duplication with HDD load increases kept under about 30 seconds and a potential slight rise in RAM use.
• Longer-term options include engine improvements and possible compression, while community suggestions for separate HDD and SSD Steam branches have not been adopted.