The Division is only two months away now and it looks like we will be able to preload the game a week before its March 8 release.
According to SteamDB, The Division will be available on Steam on March 1 which is a whole week before its scheduled release date. Of course, The Division won’t be released a week early, especially after already being pushed back several times, which instead implies that The Division will be available for preload.
That is great news for gamers who plan on buying The Division as it means we will be able to avoid crashing the servers and waiting hours to download and play the game. The only thing gamers will have to wait for is for the game to unpack which happened with Fallout 4, but for most people that took no longer than 30 minutes.
The Division beta for PS4, Xbox One and PC is due to launch soon so it will be interesting to see if Ubisoft allow preloading for the beta. If they do, that all but confirms that preloading will be available for the launch version. After all, users were able to preload the alpha before it went live last year.
If there is preloading on Steam, that will mean that players on PS4 and Xbox One will also likely be able to preload The Division before launch.
There is a chance that this may just be a placeholder date, but that would seem odd given that Ubisoft have already confirmed that The Division will be making its way onto the PS4, Xbox One and PC on March 8. Take this with a pinch of salt, but I’d be surprised if we all had to wait until launch night to download the game. That would just be silly.