Wednesday 17 August 2011

Today's Review: Software Updates On The PS3

I just got a 3D TV, cry out all you will about how it's just a gimmick and a waste of money, but dammit, I spend a large portion of my life watching TV, and I wanted a new one, so the 3D is an added bonus to the awesome sauce picture I now get on my nice thin LED screen.

But let's get to the point. I have watched a couple of 3D movies, they look pretty damn good. But the PS3 also has a few 3D games, and I was excited to try them out, until I remembered the reason I don't play PS3 games too much. The stupid software updates.

I am predominantly an XBox 360 gamer, I only really dabble into the PS3 for the odd exclusive, otherwise it's a Blu-Ray player. When there's an update for a game on the XBox, it's an easy process. The file is around 4MB and is finished within a couple of seconds. The PS3, however, is a completely different story, and it's a baffling one. Their game updates are in the hundred of megabytes, and they take an age to download.

I don't really understand, especially when you have to install some files for the game and then update it. These games are on a disc with way more capacity than an XBox disc, but they require so much more updating and installing to even run. If you don't want to install an update for an Xbox game, that's fine, you can just play it offline. But the PS3 forces you to install the update, and doesn't let you do anything else while it's downloading.

It wouldn't be so bad if it downloaded at the speed with which my other devices do. But for some unknown reason it can take over an hour to download just over 100MB of data. Every time one of these update screens emerge I want to kill it dead. They stop me from playing the game for a pretty large amount of time, especially considering that if I hire them from work I only get them for two days. By the time it's gone through all the failed downloads and installing I could probably only play it for a couple of hours before it needs to go back.

I gave up tonight. After a couple of failed attempts at snail pace downloading over Wifi I found an ethernet cable and plugged the PS3 directly into the modem. There's a noticeable difference, but it's still slow as hell. This whole thing is a broken system, and pretty much ruins my enjoyment of any major PS3 game before I even start it. Sony can suck on my joypad.

My rating: 0/5

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