Black Ops 3 day one patch: New Call of Duty title will need hefty patch to run on launch day

The patch will be 2.7GB on PS4, and bigger on other consoles

Virtually reality: a still from the forthcoming sequel to the bestselling 2012 game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Like every blockbuster game being released these days, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, due for release in the UK on Friday 6 November, will have a hefty day one patch that will have to be downloaded to fix "security and stability" issues on launch day.

According to one user on the NeoGAF forum, the patch is 2.7GB for PlayStation 4.

PlayStationLifestyle also reported that the patch weighs in at 3GB on Xbox One, and 8GB for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The patch is smaller than most - recently-released Halo 5 needed a massive 9GB patch before gamers could play online, meaning potentially hours of waiting for those who downloaded the game as soon as it was available.

Mercifully, the patch is already available to download on PS4 at least, so those who don't want to wait to play after picking up a physical copy can get ready before release.

Day one patches can be a pain, especially for those with slow connections or usage limits.

However, they're unlikely to go away any time soon.

In the old days, games had to be perfect on release, as there was no way of sending out fixes once the discs or cartridges had been shipped.

Now, with ubiquitous internet and multi-million pound markerting campaigns behind games like Black Ops 3, games companies would rather get the incomplete game out on time rather than wait, as it's fairly easy to send patches to customers after launch.

There's always quite a long period of time between the game getting sent off for certification and manufacturing and the actual launch date, so many gamers would rather the developers use that time to fix any problems through patches.

But for those with slower internet or limited storage space on their consoles, the growing phenomenon of the day one patch is one of the many annoying things about gaming in 2015.