Detailed measurements of PSP games load times at IGN

L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
http://psp.ign.com/articles/571/571164p1.html

Here's a quote from one of the four tested games:

Ridge Racers

Starting up the game from the XMB menu or from a power off, following the Sony Computer Entertainment and PSP logos, the screen goes blank for 16 seconds before the Namco logo appears. From there, there's no more loading until you enter a race. The car and track selection screens don't have any loading when you first start the game, as they're apparently loaded during the initial loading period.

Once you've selected a car and track and set your choice for automatic or manual transmission, the game takes between 13 and 15 to start the race. These extremes are based on the four tracks that we were able to try out.

Finish a race, and there's zero load time to start a replay. However, when you select to go back to the car and track selection screens, the game goes through about ten seconds of loading (this is where we got confused yesterday).

We still hope that playing around with the options will reveal a shortcut for track and car selection (as was used for fighting games back in the 32-bit days) so that we can jump right into a new race with as little delay as possible. Even without this feature, the load times aren't all that bad. The game's interface is so smooth we couldn't believe we were looking at a launch title, and the lengthy, intense races that await make the loading times okay with us.
Click to expand...

What surprised me about their yesterday's update was how they said that Rally X could not actually be played while the game was booting/loading but rather only after the game already loaded... That's weitd and kinda defeat the purpose. On the flipside, there's apparently more emulated minigames included, not only Rally X.
 
between-holes loads in minna no golf are apparently very brief. that's good to know.

how long is 15 seconds, exactly? how does that compare to the typical load time of a ps2 game? i should break out the stopwatch myself.
 
Bah, those few seconds are just enough time to wink at the cute girl next to you on the subway/train/etc. and say 'that's right baby, DS is for teh kiddies, you're looking at a real man' and then smoothly look back down to see your PSP flash its low battery indicator. It's win-win! :D
 
drohne said:
between-holes loads in minna no golf are apparently very brief. that's good to know.

how long is 15 seconds, exactly? how does that compare to the typical load time of a ps2 game? i should break out the stopwatch myself.
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More or less the double...
 
ourumov said:
More or less the double...
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15 secs is double the load time of PS2 games are we talking powerup PS2 to gameplay? 15s sounds too short. Reread the opening post... sounds similar to PS2 load times.
 
tedtropy said:
Bah, those few seconds are just enough time to wink at the cute girl next to you on the subway/train/etc. and say 'that's right baby, DS is for teh kiddies, you're looking at a real man' and then smoothly look back down to see your PSP flash its low battery indicator. It's win-win! :D
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:lol
 
That's horribly counter-intuitive for portable gaming. The reasons behind Kuturagi's old comments on how he envisions the PSP to be played more at home are becoming clearer.
 
Ugh... I really don't like loading times more than 10 seconds... (the load times in Half Life 2 are painful). I really enjoy games that are more seamless and loading is pretty jarring in some cases. With that said it's not a deal breaker by any means.
 
how long is 15 seconds, exactly? how does that compare to the typical load time of a ps2 game?
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Depends - for Namco PS2 games it's about double.
For EA PS2 games, it's about 1/10th :)
 
king zell said:
Battery + RR = ?

I'll wait for specific answers
Click to expand...
Everyone is going to have to wait until 12.12.04 for Battery + RR impressions since no one has any PSP games in their possession with their PSPs.
 
tedtropy said:
Bah, those few seconds are just enough time to wink at the cute girl next to you on the subway/train/etc. and say 'that's right baby, DS is for teh kiddies, you're looking at a real man' and then smoothly look back down to see your PSP flash its low battery indicator. It's win-win! :D
Click to expand...


Yeah that way by the time you go back to playing you will not see her roll her eyes and her big non-geeky looking boyfriend come sit down next to her. At which point he will feel sorry for you and not beat the crap out of you!
 
Everyone is going to have to wait until 12.12.04 for Battery + RR impressions since no one has any PSP games in their possession with their PSPs.
Click to expand...
We could make a betting poll and guess on it though. :)
 
Fafalada said:
We could make a betting poll and guess on it though. :)
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No need, *some* people I trust already have it, after 4.5 hours of game playing RR the psp was still going on (on a full charge)
 
I think the battery life on a game like RR while using WiFi is gona be like 2 - 3 hours. Sony knows how to sell add ons, they do it with thier cameras. The Battery life on PSP is gonna suck! It will be a matter of whether it bothers you or not, and if you are willing to purchase more batteries
 
I just timed the startup of Ridge Racer V (from power on to the Namco logo). It takes 18 seconds. This PS2 is VERY recent, so games load immediately. Older PS2s, even when they were first purchased, take at least 2-3 seconds longer while heavily used units (prior to DRE problems) require even more time than that. There is also a loading screens between the title screen and main menu as well as between the menu and car selection screen (each of those last about 3 seconds).

Now, they seem to be claiming that there are 16 seconds of black screen loading present.

Based on videos, the SCE and PSP logo screens literally last for less than 2 seconds a piece (MUCH faster than the PS2 startup sequence).

So, based on their reports, the wait between turning on the system and starting the game is roughly the same as starting up your PS2 with Ridge Racer V in the drive. Honestly, the waiting required never really bothered me much...but when you straight up say "16 seconds", it sounds a whole lot longer.

Now, the actual RACE loading times DO seem a bit longer. Based on testing, RRV takes between 8-10 seconds to load a race (that's the time spent watching the loading animation). However, if you factor in the 3 second wait between the mode selection and car selection screens, it's about on par.

It seems to me that Ridge Racers loading times are basically about equal with RRV on PS2. If you could deal with those (I could), it shouldn't be a big deal.
 
Jr. said:
I think the battery life on a game like RR while using WiFi is gona be like 2 - 3 hours. Sony knows how to sell add ons, they do it with thier cameras. The Battery life on PSP is gonna suck! It will be a matter of whether it bothers you or not, and if you are willing to purchase more batteries
Click to expand...

Well the settings were "middle sound" (using headphones) "middle brightness" "no wifi"

Yes I know this may sound rubbish, but I've known the person for years and what they said always did come though
 
Jr. said:
Yeah that way by the time you go back to playing you will not see her roll her eyes and her big non-geeky looking boyfriend come sit down next to her. At which point he will feel sorry for you and not beat the crap out of you!
Click to expand...

I see you have experience in this field.
 
No need, *some* people I trust already have it
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No no you weren't supposed to tell, I was trying to con people out of some money :D

Anyway, I haven't tested the actual game myself, but it sounds about right to me.

dark said:
If you could deal with those (I could), it shouldn't be a big deal.
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I think some people are saying that different standards apply to portable then a desktop console in that regard. Either way, for launch game I think it's not bad at all (I recall some really bad offenders with early PS2 games).
 
IGN appears to have too much time on their hands if they bother to post flame-bait info like that which 90% of the time will only be used by people that have no interest in getting the PSP...like me :D
 
I have a question for people who know stuff here.
What is it about GameCube's discs that make loading faster? And why couldn't Sony do something like it for the PSP?
 
sohka88 said:
And to what do we owe this obvious expert deduction?
Click to expand...


Because the optimum battery life setting according to Sony are:

Medium Brightness, Medium Sound(with head phones) and no networking going on.

With those settings they claim 5 - 6 hours of battery life. So that means if you want to hear the game more, or need the screen brighter you are going to drain the battery quicker, and if the CPU is transmitting data wirelessly it is gonna drain the battery more. That is where I come up with those estimates! I can't even image what the single disc sharing would do!
 
paul777 said:
I have a question for people who know stuff here.
What is it about GameCube's discs that make loading faster? And why couldn't Sony do something like it for the PSP?
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, here, but I thought the data "pits" were burned closer than a conventional DVD are. Less space for the laser to travel, lessening search time.
 
The Faceless Master said:
whats sad is the loading isnt that bad when you compare it to some GBA games that have like 15-30 seconds of unskippable splash screens and logos...
Click to expand...
:lol :lol :lol Yeah right troll! Whats sad is that you would even compare the two!
 
The Faceless Master said:
whats sad is the loading isnt that bad when you compare it to some GBA games that have like 15-30 seconds of unskippable splash screens and logos...
Click to expand...
I must agree with this. Most games are nicer, but the odd Space Channel 5 or Dragon Warrior III is annoying. Of course, on the PSP at least there's a good excuse for the long startup time.
 
The Faceless Master said:
whats sad is the loading isnt that bad when you compare it to some GBA games that have like 15-30 seconds of unskippable splash screens and logos...
Click to expand...

The thing is that most GBA games don't have much loading within the game itself. Most of the time, there's only loading times when you save your game like Mario & Luigi. I don't know about PSP, I haven't been following the PSP news in the last day or so, but having loading times during the game kinda sucks

Do the loading times for PSP take account for the splash screens/logos too? Wouldn't that make it longer as well?
 
tedtropy said:
Bah, those few seconds are just enough time to wink at the cute girl next to you on the subway/train/etc. and say 'that's right baby, DS is for teh kiddies, you're looking at a real man' and then smoothly look back down to see your PSP flash its low battery indicator. It's win-win! :D
Click to expand...


:lol :D

I do hate load times...
 
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