How Big Is Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout Battle Royale Map? [Updated]

Update: September 5, 2018 - The Blackout map is revealed!

Call of Duty showed off their Blackout map ahead of the Beta's launch, showing off all of the potential drop areas they have for the mode. While the map is clearly shown, the size comparisons are still unclear. Buildings are seen, making this seem like a smaller map that some one hope, even if this is "Call of Duty's biggest map

Original Article:

Call of Duty's Black Ops 4 Community Reveal Event brought on a ton of new content and modes to the upcoming game. Some of this no one expected, but with the battle royale genre exploding in recent months, a BR mode was expected in the newest COD. In the new mode, the presentation explained that the map for the game would be around 1,500 times the size of the classic map Nuketown. But, what does that entail?

So first off, Nuketown is not the tiniest map, but it is among the smallest of all of Call of Duty's maps ever. Although we know that part, the size has never been given outright to have a real number on our hands. So, the non-mathematicians we are, we did some math. It's definitely not perfect and it might take a few liberties, but we wanted to present it exactly how we found this final number to help people understand the scope of the game, even if it's not exact.

Above is a map of Nuketown, where someone has courteously drawn on a grid system. On our screen, which may be different on your end reading this article, each square is exactly one inch, making this math a ton easier on us. The map includes two moderately sized homes, their yards, and even the full front yards of a couple others. It also includes a cul de sac. Now, cul de sacs tend to vary in size, so we used a rough guess to come up with the number. Uing the City of Los Angeles' official Standard Street Dimensions, we determined the approximate radius of the circle of a normal cul de sac in LA is 35 feet. Since this is video games and fiction, we inflated that number to 40 for good measure.

That's all we need to guess on to come up with our figures since the above map gives us the quadrants and additional details. Doing the math also gives us around 66 feet for a single quadrant/square (rounded down for good measure and keep our averages balanced). 

Nuketown is pretty small, but we can find the approximate size

Next, we split the map into three approximate squares, the top house in B3, The cul de sac in C3, and the final house and yard in D3. Measuring with a ruler gives top house a 1.1 by 1.3, cul de sac at 1 x 1.6, and bottom house at 1.45 x 1.

With this logic, we know that one inch being 66 feet, this gives us 6,229.08 (top), 6969.6 (cul de sac), and 5656.2 (bottom). Adding them together gives us the approximate square footage for classic Nuketown to be 18,854.88 feet.

Blackout is said to be roughly 1,500 times the size of Black Ops' Nuketown, right? This puts the map for Blackout at 28,282,320 sq. ft. Impressive, right? Not so much. Let's compare it to good old Fortnite's map now.

We'll start by translating our findings into 2.6275135063 kilometers squared or (2.6 km/^2 for short). Fortnite's official size of their map is said to be 5.6 km/^2, according to a note mentioned on Unreal Engine's own website. This makes Call of Duty's Blackout map under half the size of the tiny Fortnite island.

Blackout could change the way Battle Royale is played

Why does it matter? Treyarch is obviously keeping people closer together to keep the action going at any given time like a normal Call of Duty match, which is a good change. But, giving people less time to prepare can cause issue with some battle royale players. They claim to be cramming in all of the best parts of maps across their entire history, which means there's a lot to do and a ton of places to drop in all in a small area for 100 people to enjoy. Nuketown is at its best with 8 players on the map, meaning this size is suited for 12,000 Nuketown players to be comfortable, but may be a little more closer together than the average Fortnite or PUBG player could enjoy.

Could our numbers be a good approximation to help us find out Black Ops IIII's Blackout map size? Or are we just completely off? Let us know!