Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Allows PS3 Owners to Install Textures on Their Hard Drive

Treyarch has confirmed that its upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 shooter will allow PlayStation 3 owners the possibility of installing the game’s textures onto the hard drive of their console, although this won’t give them a performance advantage.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is one of the biggest games set to appear this year and both its developer, Treyarch, and its publisher, Activision, are sharing more and more details about the new first-person shooter.

In order to soothe the worries of PlayStation 3 owners, Treyarch Lead Designer David Vonderhaar has confirmed on the Black Ops 2 forums that the game will offer them an option to install texture files onto the hard drive of their device.

According to Vonderhaar, the decision was taken in order to alleviate the strain put on the console’s Blu-ray drive by owners who constantly play the game.

“Black Ops 2 has an option to "Install Textures to HDD",” he said. “When we explained to PS3 folks that installing to the HDD wouldn't necessarily give us any significant performance gains, they explained back that the issue is they play so much it puts constant stress on the Blu-ray drive and wears them out.”

According to Vonderhaar, the texture files don’t occupy a lot of space and it’s hard to give an estimate as his team is still working on the game.

“It's a non-trivial amount of HDD space to install all the textures. I don't want to get into exactly numbers because anything can, and does change during development.”

What’s more, the regular game won’t have an install feature, as it continues to use the pre-caching system employed on Black Ops 1.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is out on November 13 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, and on November 18 for the Nintendo Wii U.