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PS3 and the "20 minute wait"


Devyn
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Hi friends, romans, and countrymen. I've been scouring around the internet lately, and I've ran into various sites and webcomics complaining about "20 minute wait times" that occur due to PS3 games having to install data on the console so that load times will be fast when you are actually playing the game. To be specific, you only do this once, that is when you put the disc in the console for the first time.

Now, Penny Arcade, Kotaku, and a bunch of others are griping about this.

Here's an excert from Kotaku:

"And with a game like Devil May Cry 4, you can understand a developer wanting to get the most out of the hardware (even if they should have given us the option of an install). The trade-off - ie fast loading times - for a big game like that, people are OK with. But Hot Shots Golf 5? If the final retail build ships like this, a 20-odd-minute wait and 5GB of HDD space for a cartoon golf game is taking the piss. Dear PS3 developers: this is a worrying trend. Please stop."

Alright, this is pathetic. I can understand being slightly agitated over having to store t gigabytes of information on your hard drive for a game, but this is ridiculous.

You already have to wait several years for your favorite games to come out. Why can't you wait 20 minutes? People will bitch about anything. While waiting during that horrid "20 minutes of pain", why don't you go do something else?

Cook some food, have sex with someone, go pick up some beer, post on the internet, walk your dog, clean your bathroom, PLAY a different console or game until the game in installed, do some homework, buy some groceries, exercise, call your mom, shave your armpits, take out garbage...

Okay, that's what I wanted to say.

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I think not, because you're given the option to buy the game or not, or purchase the game on a different console, like the X-box.

Still, from a computer guy's perspective, isn't this more efficient - Those loading times are going to add to a far greater number than 25 minutes. This is fact. Personally, I'd rather do this for all of my games, but the Wii is an entirely different animal.

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I think not, because you're given the option to buy the game or not, or purchase the game on a different console, like the X-box.

Still, from a computer guy's perspective, isn't this more efficient - Those loading times are going to add to a far greater number than 25 minutes. This is fact. Personally, I'd rather do this for all of my games, but the Wii is an entirely different animal.

No, its not more efficient, one of the advantages consoles have always had was that you don't have to go through the mess of installing games and managing memory. The fact is Im ok with a bunch of 1 minute waits, Id rather deal with those then a 25 minute wait, followed by a bunch of 30 second waits as well...

The fact is, if all of my xbox 360 games installed, I'd have several hard drives full, and then Id be dealing with massive memory issues. From what Ive seen of the few PS3 games I have installed (up until I sold my PS3) It didnt reduce loading times too significantly.

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I agree with you that using up the hard drive is a problem. It's inefficient in that way, but in the long run, it saves you time. Personally, I'd rather save time, and I can clear the hard drive when I want to. I don't blame Capcom (and the other companies that do it) for trying something different. I'd rather deal with the 20 minute install and then have quick loading times throughout the rest of the game, especially if I plan on playing the game for more than 40 hours (and most of my games, excluding my old school games, get this kind of attention).

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I agree with you that using up the hard drive is a problem. It's inefficient in that way, but in the long run, it saves you time. Personally, I'd rather save time, and I can clear the hard drive when I want to. I don't blame Capcom (and the other companies that do it) for trying something different. I'd rather deal with the 20 minute install and then have quick loading times throughout the rest of the game, especially if I plan on playing the game for more than 40 hours (and most of my games, excluding my old school games, get this kind of attention).

See, I play a bunch of my games every day. And so I'd end up having to uninstall and reinstall all the time. I'd end up going through the installation process five or so times before I finished a game. And as I said, the loading times weren't all that faster on the games I did install, I just fail to see the value I guess.

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How fast are the loading times compared to the 360? Or is it just a "normal" load time after installing?

Capcom has apparently claimed that DMC4 will have SNES like load times thanks to the install, not that I care; I gave up on that series a long time ago.

Anyway, DMS4 is the only PS3 game I know of with a hard drive install that is that big and takes that long. I've never had a game on the system take more than 5 minutes tops to install anyway, and an extra five minute wait doesn't bother me. Not only am I plenty used to longer installs with PC games, but installing the full Synthogy Ivories on my computer pretty much made me immune to any normal install bothering me. Installing 40GB of samples took longer than any game I've ever installed on anything.

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What few of the people that are bitching realize is that this is a necessary step if they want to have bearable load times at all. Blu-Ray has ass horrible load times, period. It simply cannot read the data fast enough off of the disk to make load times bearable. Rearranging the information on the disk helped a bit for Oblivion PS3, but they were still worse than the 360 version. This has long been the weak point of Blu-Ray, especially in the realm of data storage.

If you seriously cannot wait 20 minutes you need to have a longer attention span.

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What few of the people that are bitching realize is that this is a necessary step if they want to have bearable load times at all. Blu-Ray has ass horrible load times, period. It simply cannot read the data fast enough off of the disk to make load times bearable. Rearranging the information on the disk helped a bit for Oblivion PS3, but they were still worse than the 360 version. This has long been the weak point of Blu-Ray, especially in the realm of data storage.

If you seriously cannot wait 20 minutes you need to have a longer attention span.

Yep, chalk that up to Sony forcefeeding a new standard in an effort to get people to adopt blu-ray movies over creating a solid console experience. PS3's Blu-ray drive is just too slow compared to the 360's or even the Wii's DVD drive.

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I didn't mind the install. It was one of the factors that contributed to me getting it on ps3 instead of 360. It could become troublesome in the future if you own the 40 gig i suppose. But isn't the data compressed like it is on Warhawk? it only uses the 5 gigs while you're actually playing it right? I assume because Warhawk is the same way i think.

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I didn't mind the install. It was one of the factors that contributed to me getting it on ps3 instead of 360. It could become troublesome in the future if you own the 40 gig i suppose. But isn't the data compressed like it is on Warhawk? it only uses the 5 gigs while you're actually playing it right? I assume because Warhawk is the same way i think.

Nope, this is data that gets installed to your hard drive - I remember Virtua Fighter 5 did the same stuff, although it didn't take up nearly as much as more recent games have been starting to.

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What few of the people that are bitching realize is that this is a necessary step if they want to have bearable load times at all. Blu-Ray has ass horrible load times, period. It simply cannot read the data fast enough off of the disk to make load times bearable. Rearranging the information on the disk helped a bit for Oblivion PS3, but they were still worse than the 360 version. This has long been the weak point of Blu-Ray, especially in the realm of data storage.

Oblivion had better load times on the PS3 than the 360 actually. Granted, it does install to the hard drive, but that kind of brings up a point that works in the PS3's favour; The BD drive isn't really that much slower than the Wii and 360 DVD drives, and developers can use hard drive installs to cut load times even more. I've never noticed load times in a PS3 game that were substantially different from the load times on any other console.

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According to Tycho from Penny Arcade, who purchased both versions of DMC4, the installation time is a moot point as it only alleviates load times by a very small percentage and the load times were already short to begin with. I think a 20 minute install time or any installing on a home console is completely unnecessary especially when it does not amount to a significant load time drop off.

The whole installation process, if developers are so insistent on it, should keep it optional.

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If he's comparing it to the 360 version, of course that one loads fast since it doesn't use Blu-Ray. If the load times are only a little better the 360 version even with the install, just imagine how bad the load times on the PS3 version would have been without installing. I'm thinking that Capcom made the install mandatory because they couldn't stand the un-installed load times.

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