Assassin's Creed Shadows file size is the second-biggest in the series, beaten only by Valhalla and dwarfing Mirage

Assassin's Creed Shadows screenshot showing female protagonist Naoe
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

The file size for Assassin's Creed Shadows has been revealed, and it's a biggun, so make sure you clear some room on your hard drive ahead of its March 20 launch date.

A ResetEra user posted a picture of their Xbox pre-download of Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it clocks in at a whopping 109.36GB. For comparison, Elden Ring is only about 45GB on Xbox, less than half the size of Shadows.

"Damn! A lot larger than I thought," replies one commenter. The previous mainline entry in the series, Assassin's Creed Mirage, only needs 40GB, just a third of what Shadows is demanding. It did seem a lot smaller in scope and scale, but still, that's an absurd increase. Valhalla, arguably the biggest game in the series, requires 160GB of storage space according to its Steam system requirements, so that should help you know what to expect from Shadows.

The ResetEra post also tells us that the preload for Assassin's Creed Shadows is now live on Xbox. The PS5 preload isn't live yet, but if Monster Hunter Wilds was anything to go by, it'll be two days before release, so March 18.

At over 100GB, Assassin's Creed Shadows will take up at least 10% of the space on even the biggest stock Xbox or PS5 hard drive. Luckily there are plenty of speedy PS5 SSDs and even 16TB Xbox SSDs you can get.

I remember when a 16MB PS2 memory card seemed like more storage than I could ever need – how young and naive I was. These days, many triple-A games are well over 100GB which means we're all having to constantly delete and redownload our favorites. I should bite the bullet and just get a proper external hard drive myself, but I am simply useless with technology.

While you're here, check out all the upcoming video game release dates so you know what else to save some space on your SSD for.

Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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