It only ... delays


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http://arstechnica.c...ames-suffer.ars

Posting this because honestly, this is the main reason I never play my Playstation 3 when I actually have the time to do it.

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When it comes to high definition, multiplatform console games, you have a choice: you can go Sony or you can go Microsoft. Frankly, I'm starting to think even Sony wants you to choose Microsoft. Why does it feel like I'm being punished every time I try to play a game on my PlayStation 3?

The last time I tried to play a game on the console, I was forced to download a mandatory update, which added a feature I didn't care about. (The update gave Sony the ability to suggest things to me. Gee, thanks.) The process took 30 minutes.

Then I had to actually download the game from the PlayStation Store, which took an amazingly long time compared to what I'm used to from Xbox Live or Steam. When I saw just how slowly the download was moving, I was tempted to buy it on the Xbox 360 with my own money instead of using the review code supplied to Ars, but I persevered.

All told, it was over an hour before I was actually playing the game. On any other system, it would have been minutes.

Fast-forward to this week, when I wanted to revisit ModNation Racers to see if the new patch improved loading times. I turned on my system, popped the game in, and was gobsmacked to see that the system forced me to grab yet another update. What does this update do? It fixes the first update, the one I didn't want.

So the update downloads, it installs, the system restarts, and there goes twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back. People tell me to set up a proxy server to decrease download times, because slow download speeds are enough of a problem that such bizarre workarounds exist.

Update complete! Let's play ModNation Racers! Of course, I first needed to download the patch to fix the game's loading times. The file is 131MB in size. I can't download it in the background, and it takes seven minutes to complete. That means my data speed is 2.5Mbps, which seems about right for the slow-as-dirt PlayStation 3 downloads. Then it has to install, and the game reboots.

Such stories are not uncommon.

"At this point I basically just build in 30 to 40 minutes [of] time prior to actually playing the game when I turn on my PS3," one gamer told me via Twitter when I complained. Someone else said I shouldn't complain because the PlayStation Network is free. Everyone agreed that these steps, and their general sluggishness, amount to a real pain in the butt.

Ah, but I wasn't actually ready to play yet. I had forgotten that the original review was written on my debug kit; to play on my PS3, I'd need to install the game files to my hard drive. This is mandatory. This is after I updated the update that I didn't want and downloaded the patch that restarted my game to fix the load times on a game that you have to install on your hard drive. Simply wonderful.

So does the patch fix the ModNation loading times? I have no clue. By the time I suffered through this madness, installed and updated and patched and wrote this, it was time to pick up my kids from school.

What's your time worth?

I never think to turn on the system to get these updates when I don't want to game, which means they always smack me in the face when I'm excited about playing something or have to do some work. If I have 30 minutes to game, I'm better off avoiding my PS3 if I haven't played in a while... there will be some form of update or install to eat up that time.

It's not that Microsoft doesn't patch; it does. But the process is so much faster, easier, and less frequent (generally done only to add major features). It's not that Microsoft games can't be installed to the hard drive; they can, it's just rarely mandatory. And I'm not sure what Sony does in terms of download speeds, but they are markedly slower than other digital distribution services on the same Internet connection.

When you're in the weird circumstance where all of this is piled together, it can be infuriating. Not quite PSP Go bad, but still deeply annoying. Sony needs to value our time a little more.

Don't forget, though, you can get firmware updates and patches pushed to your system... if you'd like to spend $50 for a year of PlayStation Plus.

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I'm not bothered by the download times on my FiOS connection. System updates aren't all that frequent, either. I'm not sure what to really say. The other night, I had to download a small patch for Bad Company 2. It was under 20MB I think. It took about 30 seconds to download the patch, and about 10 to install it. Then I was up and running in a multiplayer game about 2 minutes later.

Last week, I turned on my PS3 for the first time in about 4 weeks. There was a firmware update. It downloaded in five minutes, and was installed in about 3. Maybe it's just that my connection is decent and my PS3 is on roids :D.

I really don't know what the issue is with download times on PSN.

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Why Sony has this method of delivering updates and patches in huge sizes is unreasonable and one of the issues I have with the PS3. If he thinks Modnation Racers is bad, try not playing LittleBIGPlanet for months. I gave it a boot recently and was told that I had to update it. I accept and was presented with a queue of 13 updates, all different sizes. They've must've totaled in about 800MB altogether.

That is where PlayStation Plus actually got a use of Automatic Download overnight. There was no way I was going to sit around and wait for all those updates to download and install one by one.

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It is annoying, XBOX game patches take seconds to download and install I don't understand why the PS3 patches are so large in comparison.

At least Sony are working in smaller patches for the Firmware now and Playstation Plus does help.

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PS3 updates were cumulative, so it aggregates all the previous patches into one big download (think Service Pack). Nowadays they've changed it to detect previous patches you may have had installed and now only downloads the ones it requires.

Doesn't make it any less tedious :( I wanted to quickly play a round of Modern Warfare 2 the other day and was informed I *needed* to install an update to continue. Surely they should change those sorts of updates from mandatory to optional? How can a Playstation Store update be mandatory when all I want to do is play some CoD online?

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I swear the author at ars was sitting behind me watching me experience my ps3. That is my exact experience with psn to a "t". And I have a 25mb connection.

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It's definitely frustrating, especially considering how the Xbox 360 downloads and installs updates so quickly. I would be a little more forgiving of the wait times (and the lack of background downloading) if there wasn't a better way, but Microsoft has been kicking ass with their update system for years now.

Last week my buddies and I wanted to give the ModNation update a try (to see if it really fixed the awful load times), but we didn't have the thing downloaded, and so we just said "screw it", and we ended up playing Blur on the 360. My friend is going to download it sometime this week so that it can be ready for next Saturday. It's a little sad how we have to work that way, and plan ahead whenever a large update arrives.

It's hardly the end of the world, and I would argue that it probably doesn't justify an entire editorial on a major technology website, but it is rather sad and pathetic that Sony still doesn't have their **** together.

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Why Sony has this method of delivering updates and patches in huge sizes is unreasonable and one of the issues I have with the PS3. If he thinks Modnation Racers is bad, try not playing LittleBIGPlanet for months. I gave it a boot recently and was told that I had to update it. I accept and was presented with a queue of 13 updates, all different sizes. They've must've totaled in about 800MB altogether.

That is where PlayStation Plus actually got a use of Automatic Download overnight. There was no way I was going to sit around and wait for all those updates to download and install one by one.

This review is just biased against time lol. I think the person who wrote this needs to learn about internet connectivity and such.... I just bought LBP the other day, popped it in, and boom, had 13 updates to get. Know what I did, I made a sandwhich. In the 3 to 4 minutes it took to make me that awesome breaded meal, the downloads had all finished and installed. It is sort of expected. Hell, to get Counter Strike Source Beta update off of steam, it took roughly 4 hours for 1 gig download that did basically nothing to the game in my eyes, but I still wont complain. A free service is free, therefore you let go of some things in return for "free".

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It's definitely frustrating, especially considering how the Xbox 360 downloads and installs updates so quickly. I would be a little more forgiving of the wait times (and the lack of background downloading) if there wasn't a better way, but Microsoft has been kicking ass with their update system for years now.

Last week my buddies and I wanted to give the ModNation update a try (to see if it really fixed the awful load times), but we didn't have the thing downloaded, and so we just said "screw it", and we ended up playing Blur on the 360. My friend is going to download it sometime this week so that it can be ready for next Saturday. It's a little sad how we have to work that way, and plan ahead whenever a large update arrives.

It's hardly the end of the world, and I would argue that it probably doesn't justify an entire editorial on a major technology website, but it is rather sad and pathetic that Sony still doesn't have their **** together.

Agreed on all counts. I honestly don't know why the experience on PSN is so horrid in this scenario. It really doesn't seem that difficult.

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This review is just biased against time lol. I think the person who wrote this needs to learn about internet connectivity and such.... I just bought LBP the other day, popped it in, and boom, had 13 updates to get. Know what I did, I made a sandwhich. In the 3 to 4 minutes it took to make me that awesome breaded meal, the downloads had all finished and installed. It is sort of expected. Hell, to get Counter Strike Source Beta update off of steam, it took roughly 4 hours for 1 gig download that did basically nothing to the game in my eyes, but I still wont complain. A free service is free, therefore you let go of some things in return for "free".

Biased against time :laugh: Best excuse yet in the Sony camp.

Also, you must be from the US (just saw that you are) to get those types of download speeds from PSN, cause you'd certainly never download 13 patches in 3 minutes in EU. (before you come back with internet connections being the cause, it's not.)

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sorry but when i download patches and demos from the PSN i always get my 5.4mbs download speed i really cant complain heheh gotta love virgin fibre ;) may not be internet connection but it sure as hell location based i think, none of my mates have a prblem with the download speeds

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It's gotta be a location thing too, cause I find 360 updates/dlc take forever to download, and PS3 ones take almost no time..

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It's definitely location based. I get full download speed everywhere besides the PSN.

Even all our Scandinavian members (who have like the best connections in the world), see crawling speeds.

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Biased against time :laugh: Best excuse yet in the Sony camp.

Also, you must be from the US (just saw that you are) to get those types of download speeds from PSN, cause you'd certainly never download 13 patches in 3 minutes in EU. (before you come back with internet connections being the cause, it's not.)

Maybe it is location. But my download speeds on the PSN are just fine. I can say I have not seen any speed issues, and for just getting my ps3 a week ago, I have done plenty of downloading to be able to say that. Maybe Sony needs to do something about their servers over in your area, but the ones in the US are just fine.

Also though ,some people are just really impatient, or biased against time :p, and feel that a 5 minute wait is almost an hour, and go overboard. That is what I was getting from this article, seeing how I had no insight to how the servers across seas were fairing.

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Biased against time :laugh: Best excuse yet in the Sony camp.

Also, you must be from the US (just saw that you are) to get those types of download speeds from PSN, cause you'd certainly never download 13 patches in 3 minutes in EU. (before you come back with internet connections being the cause, it's not.)

how big would these 13 patches be?

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Biased against time :laugh: Best excuse yet in the Sony camp.

Also, you must be from the US (just saw that you are) to get those types of download speeds from PSN, cause you'd certainly never download 13 patches in 3 minutes in EU. (before you come back with internet connections being the cause, it's not.)

I am in the US, I have a 25mb connection, and the downloads over PSN are horrid. Yet the Xbox and PC downloads are instant. That is the case with everyone I know with a PS3 as well, and we are all in the US.

I don't think it's location necessarily. It's probably the way the servers are setup at Sony. But this is a known issue for the majority of people, so I don't see why this can't be addressed.

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how big would these 13 patches be?

they ranged between 20mb to 150mb I believe, but there were 13 of them total. I have a 30mbps connection, and it took no time to download and install them. It actually finished before my sandwhich was ready to eat.

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I am in the US, I have a 25mb connection, and the downloads over PSN are horrid. Yet the Xbox and PC downloads are instant. That is the case with everyone I know with a PS3 as well, and we are all in the US.

canada is the exact same, PSN network is SOOO slow. when my xbox was still kicking everything on their internet speed wise was fast.

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i experienced the speed issues on my ps3, its random that it happens, my main thing with playstation is how long the system takes to install this patches and updates wow, i bought bad company for both ps3 and xbox360 just wanted to check the graphic difference they both wound up needing an update, xbox360 was done installing it in 2 seconds while my ps3 took almost 4 minutes at it, xbox360 plays the game in 1080i ps3 720p, graphics look cleaner on xbox then ps

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I've seen my friends downloading mega updates to just show me a game.. I keep asking them how they put up with this stuff, and they keep telling me it's better than an Xbox 360 (Fanboys of course)

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I've seen my friends downloading mega updates to just show me a game.. I keep asking them how they put up with this stuff, and they keep telling me it's better than an Xbox 360 (Fanboys of course)

Depending on how they view things, it could be. Having to pay a monthly subscription can be a huge downer to some and having to wait a bit for free content is not as bad. After using the 360 for so long, though never owning one ( doing tech support for it after 2 years sort of leans you away from owning one lol ), I can say I like to use the ps3 more. It is a total opinion, based just on what I like. Just like your friends, I'd gladly wait an hour for something free than pay for it. Especially when that waiting can be done doing anything else, not like i'm forced to sit at the tv while it downloads and installs.

Could suck if you are in a hurry to play games. But when I'm in a hurry, it's not to play games, it is to get somewhere. When I play games, I like to make sure I have plenty of time to dedicate to them, so the immersion can actually set in.

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they ranged between 20mb to 150mb I believe, but there were 13 of them total. I have a 30mbps connection, and it took no time to download and install them. It actually finished before my sandwhich was ready to eat.

that being the case then i could get em in 5 minutes less even.

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I've downloaded patches that were bigger than the original game themselves, and they certainly weren't complete in 3 minutes. More like 20+.

When you have an impulse urge to play something quickly when you have a spare few minutes, it completely goes out the window on PS3/N.

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