Xbox and Call of Duty Consume Tons of Network Resources in the UK
On the day the Xbox Series X/S made its debut, the UK recorded record data consumption. This result, however, was influenced by many more factors, including the updates for Call of Duty games and the pre-load of Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War.
- On November 10, the UK detected record consumption of internet data;
- Among the reasons for this are the debut of the X/S Series consoles, massive updates for Call of Duty games, and the availability of a lot of patches for many other titles;
- UK internet providers are preparing for a similar scenario on the day of PS5's release.
Last Tuesday, the British telecommunications network went through a real baptism of war. According to the BBC, on November 10, many of the local Internet providers recorded record data consumption by users. What was the reason?
First of all, the launch of Xboxes Series X/S, which require software updates. The same is true of many games prepared for the launch of Microsoft's next-generation consoles; even if someone gets their boxed versions, it's not uncommon to have to download at least a few gigabytes of data (as is the case with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla).
But that's not the end of the story, as Activision released extensive patches for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Warzone on the same day, and also enabled the pre-load of Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War (which can weigh up to 130 GB), followed by Bungie publishing a large 65 GB patch for Destiny 2. It shouldn't be forgotten that at the time these words are written, a lockdown is in effect in the UK, which also has an impact on British Internet activity.
The numbers that Internet providers are talking about are indeed impressive. BT, for example, recorded a peak traffic of 18 terabits per second (the previous record was 17.5 Tb/s), while Virgin Media reports that Internet users used 108 petabytes of data (108 million gigabytes); the result is 30 percent higher than the October average and the highest since the start of the fourth season of Call of Duty: Warzone in June.
Interestingly, according to Openreach, Tuesday's traffic was indeed quite high, but it was still far from the record, with 174 petabytes of data, while on August 5, when the fifth season of Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare debuted, data consumption reached 193 petabytes.
City Fibre, on the other hand, convinces that not only Tuesday but also Wednesday was very busy for its bandwidths; many players simply haven't finished downloading everything they had in their queues yet. Another thing is that PlayStation 5 is due to make its debut in the UK next week - the CEO of Zen Internet believes that traffic will increase dramatically on that day as well. Will that be the case? We'll find out on November 19.
