Phantom Blade Zero unlocks on October 29, and two practical questions dominate the run-up for anyone who has already pre-ordered: can the game be downloaded in advance, and how much disk space should be set aside. As of October 17, 2026, those two questions do not have equally clear answers. On PS5, the preload date now has two independent sources pointing at October 27, and the download size — 134.857GB — has been read out of PlayStation Network data by the tracking account PlayStation Game Size. On PC, no capacity figure has ever been official, and none of the three store channels has a working preload.
This article keeps the two sides separate: where the PS5 preload information comes from and how it is switched on, what kind of number the 134.857GB figure actually is, what the current state is on each of the three PC stores, and how preloading interacts with refund eligibility. The unlock moment and its local-time conversions are covered in our unlock time article, and the edition and pricing comparison lives in the pre-order guide; neither is repeated here.
Official Phantom Blade Zero screenshot from the Steam store page (source: S-GAME / Steam).
PS5 preload: the console interface and PSN data both point to October 27
Around August 15, several Chinese-language outlets reported screenshots taken by PS5 players: on accounts that had completed the pre-order, a pre-download entry for Phantom Blade Zero had appeared in the console's game management screen. The interface indicated the preload was expected to begin on October 27, 2026, and pointed to the console's Automatic Downloads setting, which lets the system carry out the download on its own once the date arrives. Zhongguancun Online (ZOL, republished by Sina Finance), Ali213, and a games creator post on Tencent News all gave the same October 27 date, and all three trace back to console interface screenshots rather than an announcement from S-GAME. None of them extended the arrangement to PC.
On October 16, the same date appeared on a second, unrelated track. The data-mining account PlayStation Game Size published the Phantom Blade Zero listing it had read out of PlayStation Network's back end: the PS5 build's preload is likewise marked for October 27, two days ahead of the October 29 unlock. GamerSky carried the figure the same day in Chinese, and English-language outlets including TwistedVoxel and eTeknix followed in parallel. PlayStation Game Size tracks PSN store data as a standing beat, so its numbers come from Sony's servers rather than a press release — that makes this store-side information, not an official statement. But because two independent sources land on the same date, October 27 now stands on firmer ground than it did in August.
The boundary around all of it deserves stating plainly. S-GAME's official channels have posted no preload announcement, the studio's Steam news feed carries nothing of the sort, and the PlayStation Store product pages carry no preload label either — our own article checked five regional pages in late September, and a re-check of the US page on October 1 found only the October 29, 02:00 UTC unlock stamp in the page data, with no preload fields of any kind. If the studio later states something different, that newer information takes precedence.
Operationally, the reported path looks like this. On an account with a completed pre-order, the game's Automatic Downloads toggle in the console's game management screen is confirmed on (or switched on in settings), and the system then executes the preload on the date the interface displays. Both the ZOL and Tencent News reports note that the full contents can be selected in one pass, so that once the preload finishes, the game is ready to play at the October 29 unlock without a day-of download queue. Ali213's report adds the rationale behind the mechanism: staging the files early avoids the queues and network congestion that come from a large number of players downloading at the same time on launch day.
Before you preload: starting the download ends the refund window
PlayStation Store's cancellation policy counts "pre-loading before release" as part of the pre-ordered content: once downloading or streaming has started, the pre-order can no longer be canceled or refunded unless the item is faulty, and the policy warns that downloads will start on their own when Automatic Downloads is enabled in the system settings. For a PS5 buyer still weighing a refund, preloading and refunding are mutually exclusive — the edition decision needs to be made before the download key is pressed. Steam does not have this problem: a pre-purchase can be refunded at any time before release. The full side-by-side of both policies and the cancellation steps are in our refund and cancellation article.
On PC: no preload label on Steam, and a 150GB install window on Epic
Phantom Blade Zero's PC version sells through three channels: Steam, the Epic Games Store, and WeGame. As of October 17, none of the three is in a working preload state.
Steam's situation can be verified directly. The store page carries no pre-load wording, the store data contains no preload-related feature tags, and the page's release date still reads October 28 with no time of day attached. The US page re-checked for this article matches what our five-region check found in late September.
The Epic story has one more twist. Around August 30, Ali213 and other Chinese outlets reported that players had found a pre-download button for Phantom Blade Zero already present in the Epic client, and that the client's install window displayed a base-game size of roughly 150GB. Tapping install, however, produced an error, and nothing could actually be downloaded. The report's reading was that either Epic's back end had opened the preload channel early without activating it, or the client display was simply wrong. Either way it amounts to an early appearance on the store side, not a preload arrangement published by the developer, and no follow-up has surfaced since. As for WeGame, no preload-related report has appeared for that channel at all.
Checking the progress yourself takes only a minute. Open the product page on each store, find the area around the release date, and look for any new pre-load or pre-download wording; on Steam, the store's news feed is worth a glance too — the game's own pre-order announcement went out through that feed in mid-August, so a formal preload arrangement would be worth checking for there first. As of the checks for this article, Steam's page and data carry no such item, and Epic's button has not received a second update since it appeared. When a preload does go live properly, these are exactly the places it will show up first — the console's game management screen works the same way on the PS5 side.
Official Phantom Blade Zero screenshot from the Steam store page (source: S-GAME / Steam).
File size: PSN lists the PS5 build at 134.857GB, PC still has no official number
Start with the PS5 side. In the listing information PlayStation Game Size published on October 16, the PS5 version of Phantom Blade Zero carries a download size of 134.857GB. The figure is read out of PSN's back-end data; it is not a storage requirement published by S-GAME, and no hands-on measurement has confirmed it. It describes the size of the package that has to be downloaded, which can differ slightly from the disk space the installed game ultimately occupies. Given that the game runs on Unreal Engine 5 and the official requirements make an SSD mandatory, the magnitude sits in the same range as comparable releases.
On PC, the capacity question remains open. The official PC system requirements ask only for an SSD as the storage medium, with no capacity figure attached; the tier-by-tier differences are laid out in our system requirements article. GamerSky's report states plainly that S-GAME has not published a download size for the PC version — the same conclusion our own store checks reach. The only concrete number tied to PC capacity is still the roughly 150GB shown in the Epic client's install window described above — a store-interface figure from late August, unconfirmed by the developer. It and the PS5's 134.857GB are not the same thing on the same platform, so the two cannot be converted into one another or compared directly; each belongs to its own platform.
A word on the precision of 134.857GB. The raw figure carries three decimal places, and both GamerSky in Chinese and TwistedVoxel in English rendered it in full; eTeknix shortened the same number to 134.8GB in its headline. That is a difference in retelling, not two competing measurements. GamerSky also described the figure as on the large side by the standards of Chinese-developed games and advised players to clear space in advance — media judgments built on the number, not statements from S-GAME, which along with PlayStation has said nothing publicly about capacity.
Where the official number would appear is easy enough to scope. The first candidate is the storage line of the PC requirements table — the requirements were published in mid-August alongside the pre-order opening, and their storage entry specified the medium only, with no capacity. The second is the storage requirement field on each store's product page. The third is a pre-release note from S-GAME itself. Any one of the three updating gives the PC-side estimate something solid to stand on. One more nuance belongs here: the Epic install window labeled its ~150GB as the base game — whether a day-one patch adds more on top is equally unknown.
Until then, two small things can be done now: PS5 pre-order holders can confirm the Automatic Downloads toggle in the console's game management screen, and anyone preserving refund eligibility should hold off on starting any download until the decision is made.
A finished preload does not move the unlock time
Preloading only places the game files on the local disk ahead of release; it does not make the game playable early. Whenever the preload completes, entry waits for the unlock moment the storefront lists — the October 29, 02:00 UTC stamp carried by all five PlayStation Store pages, which is the same instant as the October 28 shown on Steam pages, written in an American time zone. The full conversion table for each region is in our unlock time article.
The date most worth watching next is October 27 itself: if the console executes the preload as displayed, the date and the capacity figure will land together, and if a PC capacity number is announced before then, it will most likely surface first in a requirements table or a store page. Until any of that happens, the October 27 date and the 134.857GB figure now delivered by the console interface and PSN data are the whole of what can be confirmed.