Digital Foundry VS Bethesda: PS3 Skyrim is still shit

conman said:
The problem is how most sites handle multiplatform releases. They usually will only play through one version to completion (typically the 360) and then briefly sample the other two (if at all). But it'll still list on their site and on Metacritic for all versions. And PR firms can further limit a site's access to different version by only supplying the 360 version. The assumption is usually that any differences aren't worth mentioning, but then you run into problems exactly like this. The solution? Sites need to have some integrity and play through--to completion--all versions of a game if they intend to include that platform in their score.
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Is that at all realistic though? There are people who have put close to 200 hours into Skyrim -- should every review site be expected to devote 600 hours of staff time to one game? In November?

It would be awesome if they could, but that requirement would easily double or triple the workload for any site that does multiplatform reviews. I would be fine if they just review what they can, and then be upfront about what they actually played ("we put 80 hours into the 360 version, then played the first 10 hours on PS3 to compare" or similar).
 
Wow, it's the first I'm hearing of this (yeah, I live under a rock). Just watched the video... that's utterly ridiculous. How did that even get released in that state?

Surely it must have been noticed by someone before it shipped?
 
rohlfinator said:
Is that at all realistic though? There are people who have put close to 200 hours into Skyrim -- should every review site be expected to devote 600 hours of staff time to one game? In November?

It would be awesome if they could, but that requirement would easily double or triple the workload for any site that does multiplatform reviews. I would be fine if they just review what they can, and then be upfront about what they actually played ("we put 80 hours into the 360 version, then played the first 10 hours on PS3 to compare" or similar).
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I don't expect reviewers to play 60 hr on every platform, but I do at least expect coverage of this issue and an attempt to duplicate this framerate lag now that we know the problem is widespread. /journalisticintegrity
 
Psychotext said:
Wow, it's the first I'm hearing of this (yeah, I live under a rock). Just watched the video... that's utterly ridiculous. How did that even get released in that state?

Surely it must have been noticed by someone before it shipped?
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That's the problem. There is no way in hell Bethesda didn't know, but they released anyway.

To bad "ethics" is such a debatable subject. >_>
 
Since I only have the PS3 as the device that could run this game, I will not buy it. Gaming reviewers should be ashamed of themselves, also I think a recall or returns should be made to this broken PS3 version.

Bethesda take ownership of this. Sony you're also accountable in this shitstorm how did you allowed this broken mess of a game in your platform?

Gamers that bought the game on PS3 can/should sue them both. Don't take this shit from them.
 
Psychotext said:
Wow, it's the first I'm hearing of this (yeah, I live under a rock). Just watched the video... that's utterly ridiculous. How did that even get released in that state?

Surely it must have been noticed by someone before it shipped?
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It got shipped because they KNEW all too well that they'd get away with it. Gaming journalists won't say shit about it 'til they feel like and most "gamers" will have the 'it works fine on another gaming platform, so that's all fine and dandy' attitude about it all too.
One of my many hates of this current gaming industry rears it's ugly head, yet again, and in a big way - piss poor and lazy arse game development.
 
Cels said:
I don't expect reviewers to play 60 hr on every platform, but I do at least expect coverage of this issue and an attempt to duplicate this framerate lag now that we know the problem is widespread. /journalisticintegrity
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I'm with you there. Especially now that Digital Foundry has done the hard part, I'm hoping to see some real coverage of this. I just don't have much of a problem with this kind of thing not being noted in reviews, especially in this case where it takes many hours for it to show up.

It has gotten really messed up that we're at the point where publishers can dictate so much of the review process, though. Review copies of the PC and PS3 versions should have been made available before release. That's more the fault of Bethesda/Zenimax PR than the press, though.
 
rohlfinator said:
Is that at all realistic though? There are people who have put close to 200 hours into Skyrim -- should every review site be expected to devote 600 hours of staff time to one game? In November?
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Wouldn't really matter how much time reviewers put into games. They're assuming any and all bugs in the review build will be ironed out in the final retail build. They know that's mostly bull shit, but they'll do their best to appease their publisher.
 
Go listen to the latest Bonus Round. Jeff Gerstman says Bethesda did a very good job of "peppering every major publication with multiple copies of the game." lol
 
Zinga said:
I for one don't blame Bethesda for this. It's Sony's fault for designing such a developer unfriendly architecture, and for limiting the amount of RAM available to devs in the PS3 to 256mb.

We should be angry at Sony for shortchanging consumers once again because they wanted to advance their own corporate interests ala CELL and Blu-Ray over what was good for the gaming industry.

So you ask, what's my evidence? the Xbox 360 runs this game much, much better because it is a much better and developer friendly architecture, even if the PS3 is potentially more powerful. Sony should make their next PlayStation more like the Xbox 360 and less like the PS3.

If you want to run games like Skyrim, you need to either have a PC or a decently engineered console.
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I seriously lol'd. This is pretty ridiculous. You would think the PS3 had been out for a month or something and not several years with your statements. There are so many awesome, incredible, smooth, beautiful games out there that are not exclusive to the system. Their games don't hit 0 frames per second just because you have been playing them for a long time.

Devs are no longer complaining about the PS3, most have developed a lot of time and money into developing for the PS3 instead of whining and complaining about it. Hell, some developers have found developing FIRST on the PS3 then porting over to the 360 as the best way to get a comparable gaming experience. Bethesda? They will just release this crap.

You know? Maybe Bethesda knew the gaming reviewers would play it on 360 first, then copy and paste a review for the PS3, and they could put out whatever crap they wanted.


I just cannot believe the QA Department at Bethesda never ever saw any of these issues. That is what really doesn't sit well with me. You mean to to tell me they were going to release a game, this epic, this huge, and didn't try to fully complete it on PS3? They didn't have someone make a submission that stated "After X amount of hours, this game will slow to sludge!"

That is what bothers me. Bethesda had to know. They had to test the PS3 version of the game, see these issues, they had to know. Unless these issues miraculously do not happen on Dev units that testers were using or something.
 
AngelSoldier said:
Nope. Every time I've read a review about the PS3 version it mentions how the PS3 version was not shipped to them until after the game had already released.
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That's what I thought... just wondered if this guy had said differently on that podcast or whatever it is.
 
The Albatross said:
I should record a video of my 360 copy of Skyrim. 40 hours in, in this area, and my game becomes completely unplayable garbage.
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Yes, you should. There's very little evidence of the issue on 360/PC.
 
Lets not forget that everyone who's PS3 isn't online is completely fucked. They don't even get the half-assed patch that at least somewhat fixes the problem. The more I think about this, the angrier I get.
 
Evolved1 said:
Hey... at least it's coverage. IGN is a big site.
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I used that as a place to sound off and both Thank IGN for reporting the story, then RIPPED them for never mentioning these issues in their review. However, when I hit to post my comment, it says comments will not display until they are reviewed by a monitor. So my comments will never be seen. I am so glad IGN never gets any of my money any more. They are so pathetic.
 
3rdamention said:
I used that as a place to sound off and both Thank IGN for reporting the story, then RIPPED them for never mentioning these issues in their review. However, when I hit to post my comment, it says comments will not display until they are reviewed by a monitor. So my comments will never be seen. I am so glad IGN never gets any of my money any more. They are so pathetic.
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I tried to do this to Kotaku for saying that a guitar is an "expensive peripheral" if you happen to have issues with Rocksmith. I can tell that Kotaku's journalists are complete idiots from that.
 
Raistlin said:
Except it's not coverage. They cited the original info, not gaf.
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It's better than no coverage at all. Here are the last Skyrim stories that other major sites have run

Bethesda Unloads Tons Of Skyrim On Shinji Mikami's Studio
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...s-of-skyrim-on-shinji-mikami-39-s-studio.aspx

Skyrim PC to be patched earlier, more often
http://www.gamespot.com/news/skyrim-pc-to-be-patched-earlier-more-often-6346987

Skyrim’s Backwards Dragons Should Disappear Next Week
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/skyrims-backwards-dragons-should-disappear-next-week/3831/

Bethesda outlines upcoming Skyrim updates
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/t...ethesda_outlines_upcoming_skyrim_updates.html
 
TimeEffect said:
Isn't any of the fault on Sony for the limited RAM?
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Truespeed said:
It's not the size of your RAM but how you use it.
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spot on guvna Tip my hat to you
hat_tip.gif
 
AngelSoldier said:
I tipped off Joystiq with the GAF topic, told em' to "Fight the good fight and spread the word."

We'll see what happens lol.
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Hopefully they'll site info of the overall discussion we had in the thread ... particularly the revelation from the DF info pointing to the long pole actually being memory leaks.

Granted, it's always possible the memory leak is simply the allocation for the change data ... which means the we're still screwed :p
 
Raistlin said:
Which is amusing, since if you look at the thread ... we've deduced that this likely is not the main issue.

lol
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Another user angrily asks Mr. Sawyer about why games are released in such poor condition, to which he answered that Skyrim's problems are "an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored…" Many other users are angry at Bethesda Game Studios for Skyrim's subpar performance on PS3, however, but Sawyer defends Bethesda. "It's not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place… We're talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment.
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Time, and by definition money, were the limiting factors, not hardware. You could take an old first generation PS3 game like Heavenly Sword, and if it wasn't ported properly, you could come up with all kinds of excuses why the X360 can't run it. Oh well you see we used the SPU to calculate this physics value, and X360 doesn't have SPUs, so we can't calculate those physics and that's why every character walks like they're floating. And then reactionary people would question why MS didn't think to put SPUs in their gaming system so it could run Heavenly Sword. Instead of questioning why the developer didn't make their software run on the given console specs.

Yeah split memory isn't as flexible, but hindsight is 20/20. X360 benefited from using a single unified pool. Bravo to AMD, but blaming Sony for the shameful port from Bethesda doesn't make sense. The fundamental problem was a failure to plan for said 256MB XDR ram. Instead they recycled a 10+ year old engine, used deceptive PR and called it a new engine, and collect obscene profits, while harming literally millions of people who are stuck with a severely defective game.

And wow gaf's defenders have nothing on the official bethesda skyrim forum fanboys. Any negative thread about Skyrim's gameplay or technical problems that pop up there get swarmed with people telling you to get lost and quit complaining, Skyrim is a perfect masterpiece, how could you be so stupid to not realize it ?
 
Death Dealer said:
Time, and by definition money, were the limiting factors, not hardware. You could take an old first generation PS3 game like Heavenly Sword, and if it wasn't ported properly, you could come up with all kinds of excuses why the X360 can't run it. Oh well you see we used the SPU to calculate this physics value, and X360 doesn't have SPUs, so we can't calculate those physics and that's why every character walks like they're floating. And then reactionary people would question why MS didn't think to put SPUs in their gaming system so it could run Heavenly Sword. Instead of questioning why the developer didn't make their software run on the given console specs.

Yeah split memory isn't as flexible, but hindsight is 20/20. X360 benefited from using a single unified pool. Bravo to AMD, but blaming Sony for the shameful port from Bethesda doesn't make sense. The fundamental problem was a failure to plan for said 256MB XDR ram. Instead they recycled a 10+ year old engine, used deceptive PR and called it a new engine, and collect obscene profits, while harming literally millions of people who are stuck with a severely defective game.

And wow gaf's defenders have nothing on the official bethesda skyrim forum fanboys. Any negative thread about Skyrim's gameplay or technical problems that pop up there get swarmed with people telling you to get lost and quit complaining, Skyrim is a perfect masterpiece, how could you be so stupid to not realize it ?
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You may want to head over to the other thread and read what I was referring to

Start at page 5
 
rohlfinator said:
Is that at all realistic though? There are people who have put close to 200 hours into Skyrim -- should every review site be expected to devote 600 hours of staff time to one game? In November?

It would be awesome if they could, but that requirement would easily double or triple the workload for any site that does multiplatform reviews. I would be fine if they just review what they can, and then be upfront about what they actually played ("we put 80 hours into the 360 version, then played the first 10 hours on PS3 to compare" or similar).
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I highly doubt many sites (if any) put as much as 200 hours into any single version of the game prior to publishing their review (though I'm sure many did subsequently).

But that's beside the point. The bigger issue is one of integrity. A site shouldn't say that a score and evaluation hold true for a version of the game that they haven't put time into. It's simply unethical. I know it is and has been common practice for a very long time. But that doesn't make it right. And it's situations like this that highlight why.

And, as you say, some of those same sites ended up putting in the time after the fact (Eurogamer's Digital Foundry). So clearly it's not a matter of not having the time or manpower. It's about not having the integrity or any sense of accountability.

But I'm not saying this is true of all sites. Many do only publish their review for the platform they reviewed the game on. And others always note which version they played. But most don't.

It has gotten really messed up that we're at the point where publishers can dictate so much of the review process, though. Review copies of the PC and PS3 versions should have been made available before release. That's more the fault of Bethesda/Zenimax PR than the press, though.
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The simple way to fix this? Don't publish multiplatform reviews for versions of games you don't receive from PR. That's one of the few ways gaming sites might have some leverage over publishers.
 
I've followed the other thread, are you referring to a memory leak ? It's hard to believe they've had the same memory leak in 2 different games. But I guess modern Bethesda games this generation really are all the same game with different assets and a shiny coat of eye candy. It would be awesome if it can be fixed. Edit: Ok read page 5. We're on the same page. Probably a fundamental problem with the engine, which will be ignored due to the costs involved.
 
Death Dealer said:
I've followed the other thread, are you referring to a memory leak ? It's hard to believe they've had the same memory leak in 2 different games. But I guess modern Bethesda games this generation really are all the same game with different assets and a shiny coat of eye candy. It would be awesome if it can be fixed. Edit: Ok read page 5. We're on the same page. Probably a fundamental problem with the engine, which will be ignored due to the costs involved.
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Continue reading ... it gets more interesting.

Surprise ending too. :p
 
Evolved1 said:
They obviously knew, because they hid the fucking game.
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This. They didn't send out the PS3 copies until the last minute, if at all (IGN didn't even have copies still the day before it released). Reviewers would only play for a couple hours on PS3 to check parity against 360/PC and, thus, avoid the shit storm when you have a long save file. They knew damned well.
 
Kunan said:
This. They didn't send out the PS3 copies until the last minute, if at all (IGN didn't even have copies still the day before it released), so that people would only play for a couple hours on PS3 to check parity against 360/PC (thus avoiding the shit storm when you have a long save file). They knew damned well.
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Yep, disgusting. I would love a refund so I can go spend my money on a better game.
 
Marcellus Wallace said:
Yep, disgusting. I would love a refund so I can go spend my money on a better game.
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I just bit the bullet and took it to Gamestop for credit. I ended up putting it on a pre-order for Mario Kart 7. I learned my lesson and i'll never buy another Bethesda product again. If I want to play one of their games i'll just rent it.
 
SolidSnakex said:
I just bit the bullet and took it to Gamestop for credit. I ended up putting it on a pre-order for Mario Kart 7. I learned my lesson and i'll never buy another Bethesda product again. If I want to play one of their games i'll just rent it.
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I still haven't traded mine... kinda reluctant since they always give you crap credit for them. And to fucking think I actually traded in Dark Souls LE toward my Skyrim preorder, because I was too bothered by its framerate!

Oh god... wish I had that one back. Smh.
 
SolidSnakex said:
I just bit the bullet and took it to Gamestop for credit. I ended up putting it on a pre-order for Mario Kart 7. I learned my lesson and i'll never buy another Bethesda product again. If I want to play one of their games i'll just rent it.
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I rented the PS3 version of Skyrim tonight from Redbox out of curiosity. Really nice looking game, and I was having fun with it up until it froze up on me about three hours in. I just chuckled and turn the system off.
 
The game won't be recalled and Beth won't be sued. In fact I assume they will walk away from this with accolades and awards.

It's everyone else with egg on our faces.
 
Marcellus Wallace said:
A recall is a good idea. The game isn't playable and shouldn't be sold to anyone. I hope anyone here at GAF that works in retail will tell fellow consumers not to buy it on PS3.
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When I went Christmas Shopping I stopped at a couple GameStop's and asked each cashier what they thought of PS3 Skyrim.

Their responses were all the same. "Terrible, do not buy."

So, A: Everybody who works at GameStop hates PS3

or

B: GameStop employee's already know about the PS3 issues and are being good chum's by letting consumers know that it's a bad idea to purchase Skyrim for PS3.
 
conman said:
I highly doubt many sites (if any) put as much as 200 hours into any single version of the game prior to publishing their review (though I'm sure many did subsequently).
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True, but even something like 60 hours per version (which is how long it can take for an issue like this to show up) would be 180 hours of playtime for one game. Which is still a huge amount of time, especially for smaller sites.

And even then, this kind of bug isn't guaranteed to show up. The guy who gave it a 7 for OPM UK didn't even hit this issue -- he marked it down for other glitches.

I agree that sites should be more upfront about what they actually played, but that wouldn't have helped all that much in this case. Instead of glowing PS3 reviews (based on the 360 copy) we just would have had no PS3 reviews.
 
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