Call of Duty: Black Ops II (opens in new tab) will feature an optional texture pack install for PS3 owners. Why? Because CoD fans are playing their favourite game so much, they’re wearing out their Blu-Ray drives.
According to a post on CoD’s official community forum (opens in new tab), installing the game’s textures to the hard drive shouldn’t actually have any impact on visual performance in the game, due to all of the graphics being ‘pre-cached’ before each match. But gamers have been complaining that they play the game so much, the constant reading of the Blu-Ray disc is breaking their machines.
Above: The forum post from David Vonderhaar explains what the option will do
The problem doesn’t apply to Xbox 360 because all games are optionally installable in their entirety on Microsoft’s machine. But with one model of the new PlayStation 3 Super Slim (opens in new tab) offering solid state memory, this option might actually make the PS3 version load faster.
We’ll soon know for sure as the game is due out on November 13 as a simultaneous worldwide release across Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii.