Latest Gears of War 4 update drastically reduces its overall size

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

If you've caught yourself sweating a little as each successive Gears of War 4 update has slowly consumed your hard drive, some help is here. The Coalition has revealed the that new Rise of the Horde update, which began rolling out today, reduces the overall size of the game by a significant amount, thanks to a new compression technique.

Though the full space taken up by Gears of War 4 on your hard drive will ultimately be lower after the update, the update itself is a bit on the large size. From The Coalition:

We've heard your feedback on the Hard Drive footprint of Gears of War 4 being quite substantial. Over the past few months, we've been working on a new compression technique to dramatically reduce the overall file size of Gears of War 4 and to provide smaller sized downloads for future Updates. In order to reduce our file size for all the Updates since release, you'll be downloading all our Updates again as one larger Update with Rise of the Horde - but the end result will be a much smaller overall game size than before.

The update itself comes in at just under 25GB on Xbox One and 29GB on Windows 10. After updating, however, the total size of the game should be around 78GB on Xbox One and 93GB on Windows 10. Those are still some hefty figures, but that's much slimmer than the 130GB that Gears was approaching on Windows 10 prior to this update.

As for Rise of the Horde itself, there's a whole lot of new stuff to check out, including some new difficulty tiers, class skills, and more. Check out our prior look at the update for more.

See at the Windows Store (opens in new tab)

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

40 Comments
  • Thanks for the info Dan! I just went to update the game to play tonight and wondered why the update was so massive.
  • A girl with all that gear. She could never pull that weight. Disgusting swj propaganda.
  • Haha always
  • k
  • Just because you're a weakling IRL doesn't mean she is.
  • This is the right answer.
  • You can virtue signal all you want but we all know girls can't carry that weight. So please don't pretend that girls can. No they can't. Unless you want to deny biology or white knight your way through life.
  • I've seen girls at the gym dead lifting 150kgs, you are talking out of your arse.
  • They have to lower the standards for girls to qualify for army. Nice try. Cherry picking is not and argument.
  • She is also only holding two guns and body armour, maybe 30kg-40kgs.
  • Just because a girl isn't expected to carry a certain weight doesn't mean she can't if they had trained enough.
  • That's bullshit. Female US marines have to do a modified pull up because women have a slightly different muscular structure than men. But it's different, not easier. Furthermore, when a woman is deployed, she has to carry the same equipment a male soldier does... There aren't any special lightweight assault rifles, combat armour or radio equipment and a litre of water will still weigh a kilogramme regardless of the genitalia of the person carrying it. I have no idea what "virtue signal" is but I do enjoy pointing out when idiots, trolls and idiot trolls are being idiots, trolls and idiot trolls lol.
  • No your wrong. They changed the amount of pull ups and other requirements. So they can do less and qualify. So who's the idiot now?
  • My wrong what? Or did you mean YOU'RE wrong? Who's the idiot indeed lol. It's a ****** position anyway to be honest... The discrepancies that do exist in some tests are, as I said, negligible, but the tests are easy for anyone in moderate physical condition anyway, for the marines a male needs 3 pull ups, 50 crunches and to complete a 3 mile run in half an hour. The difference for women is a 15 second flexed arm hang instead of pull ups... They still need the crunches and the run. I'd sooner do the pull ups. Either way, you seem to have missed the part about a soldier's equipment load which is much more pertinent to this discussion... You originally claimed she couldn't carry the gear she was holding.
  • Like I said they changed the rules for women. You just admitted it in your response. Im right and you are wrong. Period. First you said that no the rules were not changed but that women just have to do a different type of pullup but now I can see you did some research came to the conclusion that im right. So you move the goal post to [Its not that big of a deal since its close enough to mens requirements] If these SWJ idiots wanted equality then they would have made all rules the same for both sexes but a woman can not do what a man can so they changed the rules. That’s not equality that’s discrimination against men. Making it easier for women so that some SJW snowflake can feel better about them self’s is a losing strategy. 
  • The only snowflake here is you, no one else is getting into a tizzy over nothing. Also it's SJW, at least get your insults right. Also you yourself said that women don't have the same level of strength as men, so they haven't actually made it easier for women at all, it is within the same guidelines based on their level of perceived strength as a man. By your own facts if women had the same criteria as men to get in the army then it would be discrimination against women. Long story short, go get a tub of Ben and Jerry's and have a cry into that, Snowflake.
  • I said from the start the marines used a modified pull up and that's exactly what a flexed arm hang is, and I also said the test WAS different, just not to a lowered standard. I haven't changed my position, and all sporting equipment remains where it always was... And I don't care if you're on your period. Perhaps my correct sentence structure and proper use of apostrophes confused you? Shall I type monosyllabically? Oops, I mean, shall I use words that just have one sound? Now I'm a Star Wars Jedi? Cool... Once again though, you're attempting to distract from the fact that you've been proven wrong in your original point that no 'girl' is strong enough to carry that heavy load.
  • Thanks for the trolling. It was fun. You all took the bait. Lol.
  • Next, you'll start complaining how croft does double jump on the wall.
  • Not even close to the same thing.
  • If a man a woman recieve the same training regimen there will come a time where the woman won't be able to keep up. It's not hating on women, just science. There are tons of girls at the gym that outlift me all day every day, but we all know the norm is men are stronger than women. Just look at strongmen and strongwomen competitions to see the diferences are substantial. We are built different for a reason, it doesn't make one better than the other.
  • What's SWJ? Star Wars Jedi? ... You think she's using the force to carry her equipment?
  • Well a SJW would be someone like Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau. Look up gamer gate if you want to know more.
  • Oh. I know what SJW means, and what the WSJ is... But that's not what you typed, now is it?
  • What if she is a winter soldier :O
  • I can almost understand where you're coming from.  I really grown when any movie or game female character goes toe-to-toe with someone who is clearly twice their weight and muscle mass.  As if. HOWEVER, there are women who can carry all that gear, and they do, and some better than men.  My problem with women characters in entertainment is what I mentioned above, that most are created to look like 105 lbs featherweights with zero muscle mass.  Women who train clearly have the weight, muscle and tone to show.  Developers can still make female characters attractive/feminine while possessing the buff needed to carry the role.  Female MMA fighters or pretty much any crossfitter is a good example.
  • Once again, even the slimmed down size is big. Another argument for not making console versions under 1TB.
  • I see you, but an one TB console is also to small.
  • Good job.
  • I never realised it was that huge!
    Ahh, those kb days has gone, innit?
  • Me thinks the file is already rocking 4K textures in anticipation for Scorpio. 
  • A mi los servidores de Microsoft me van lentos
  • Just thought I'd share. Before I started the update, was around 125 GB. While downloading, it goes to 52 GB (so you'll have enough room even you're at 125 GB and not much free space), after install I'm at 103 GB. Nice reduction, but still a beast!!! Edit: (oh, and I have all DLC maps, so guess that's why I'm well above the 78GB mentioned in article)
  • The size of this game is a cause for concern. It won't be long before 1 game is over a terabyte in size.
  • It's all the free content. so much after support. HALO 5 and Gears 4 make all games post release support look embarrassing.
  • Halo 5 is 110gb on Xbox one. So much content.
  • Before downloading update 140GB free. After 192GB free that's 52GB less !!!!
  • thank god...I really posted this problem in feedback hub for windows 10....& I'm so glad they listened to it...I just thought they will ignore my suggestion.......my suggestion was as following - A suggestion for all the publishers is that they should give us option of what we want to install......
    Only single player campaign or entire game with multilayer.
    not all of us play multiplayer........so, why bother downloading (& pay for it as well).
    we should get an option to install what we want....single player or both (sp& mp) on steam & windows store.
    & a download should be initiated only if there's an update for single player feature (assuming the user only got sp mode installed). since he will have nothing to do with a multiplayer mode & any update for multiplayer mode. ms being a big company & implement this in their games & lead the way for others. i just now read that gears of war4 new update is 248 gb in size (most probably its just a type error). but, still my advice if implemented can save lot of time & bandwith of users. I hope ms studios lead the way for sp & mp downloads.
  • I notced my 500gb Xbox one S was out of space again... Then I see 3 games that are over 70gb (2 of them over 105gb) each, never mind 4 games that are about 15-25gb. So yea 7 games, not all TOP AAA games and your our of space on a 500gb system. Yea, I have a 2tb drive connected but, a my current playing games I like to keep internal (just my preferences) and I now have to move them. I was going to grab a 2tb model but, on Black friday, I got a 500gb Xbox one S with Battlefield 1 and 3 months of xbox live for $163.50 from Amazon. I just could not pass it up... I sold my large Xbox one with 1 controller and 2 old games (that were freee on Xbox live anyway) for $225... See why I could not pass up the deal ? I guess I wait till the warranty is up before cracking it open and dropping a 2tb or larger drive inside.
  • Well this is good news. Let's hope The Coalition shares this new fangled compression technique with other devs.