Digital Foundry VS Bethesda: PS3 Skyrim is still shit

To the PS3 players posting here saying "LOL no problems here 90 hrs in!" how big is your save file?

I don't know if you noticed in the article, but he specifically mentions a certain file-size. Once you get over that line, the game turns to shit after 30 minutes-1 hour of play. My main dude is level 52 with 95 hrs, discovered almost every location and 13mb save file...game turns to shit in an hour, sometimes more. Playing on a PS3 Slim, but I highly doubt that has any effect.
 
There's clearly a real problem here but the frustrating part is that it's not clear what configuration of the hardware/firmware its affecting or if that even matters at all. It's not happening to everyone but is the people it's happening to a vocal minority or the majority. I guarantee you if I couldn't play skyrim, I'd set something on fire... maybe not but I'd make sure everyone heard about it. So of course the news will be overwhelmingly negative. I doubt that Digital Foundry performed witchcraft to produce the footage so it's clear that it can happen fairly easily but I wish I knew the real cause. I can't simply just jump on "it Gamebryo" bandwagon because it tells you nothing but I doubt Bethesda (or even Sony) would ever share the cause with the public.

Yeah, it stinks for people that are having this problem. I was having quite a lot of slow down before that patch and it was freaking irritating. I was simply pointing out that it's working fine for me, though there has been a bit of slow down from time to time, nothing major. It's been so much better since the patch.

Let's hope Bethesda sorts the problem out. Wouldn't hold your breath, though.

To the PS3 players posting here saying "LOL no problems here 90 hrs in!" how big is your save file?

12MB. Also, just noticed I've been playing for 145 hours.
 
It's pretty insulting that in addition to not making a public statement about the issue, they list that the patch improves "occasional performance issues"
 
haha, oh wow.

I checked, and all my quest-breaking bugs are already mentioned. Good job, community.


I see no problem with the PC version of Skyrim getting GOTY.

Yeah, the list is quite comprehensive - and less than a month after release, no less. Indeed the only saving grace for Bethesda's games is the community that builds around them.

Anyways from that list it is pretty obvious Bethesda QA process is clearly a failure.
 
This has never come up for me, but remind me... can you share PS3 saves easily?

Bethesda should be soliciting save files that are unplayable so they can plug them into their PS3 debug versions to suss out the problem.
 
Durrr math is hard derp derp

EA10C3BC066CDB2E73666EA594ED6973937973DA
 
It's pretty insulting that in addition to not making a public statement about the issue, they list that the patch improves "occasional performance issues"

I still think its funny that they said they "improved" the ps3 versions "occasional performance issues" and every other thing on the patch list was listed as "fixed"

Hopefully next weeks patch will fix the problem or at least make it a hell of a lot better now that they have had nearly a month to work on it.


They where able to fart out the 2.01 patch pretty quick so I guess they know whats causing the problem.


still a dumb bug that should have never made it to retail. Any site that gives Bethesda studio of the year or any similar award should be banned from GAF out of principle.
 
The fact is that PS3 players had no idea to know about this unless actually getting that far in and experiencing it for themselves. It's not mentioned in reviews, not reflected in scores, nothing. Also you'd think that the developers would know how bad it gets, I mean don't they playtest these things? They're the fucking developers. They need to be held responsible for this and they need to issue out an okay to retailers saying that if a customer tries to return the PS3 version because they can't fucking play it, to give them a full refund.

This may sound over the top and I tend to avoid making drama queen type posts, but I am pretty fucking disgruntled about it. It's true that I did know that the PS3 version wasn't quite up to snuff, but that the game was still playable. This video proves otherwise. So yeah I'm kind of upset that I paid the money for this game when I could have gotten something like Rayman Origins which is supposedly fantastic and is a game that you can actually play.

I'm curious, though, did you watch the second video? The article does kind of a poor job of distinguishing between the fact that the first video is pre-patch and the second video is post patch, which is the one that's actually relevant, at least for those who didn't bother reading and just clicked play.

In no way am I excusing Bethesda, but compared to the first video, it seems the patch helped quite a bit (though it clearly still needs work). And they did say they are working on another patch. Nevertheless, they clearly should have either delayed the game or just not bothered with the PS3 at all.
 
Sony are equally to blame. Doesn't every game get tested and given the OK by them? They knew it was a piece of shit but couldn't delay it and let Xbox have it all to themselves. I think people have a better shot bitching at Sony to get something done about this than to Bethesda who seem to be a bunch of incompetent money hungry fuckheads.

I don't think cert cover performance issue and bugs. They just make sure the game run, doesn't blow up your PS3 or wreck havoc on PSN. I don't think it should be Sony job to beta test software for other company. There are plenty of games with horrible performances on all platforms.

Also problem with Skyrim on PS3 is that it take a bit of time for the problem to manifest.
 
Am I the only one experiencing this on 360, as well? Not quite as bad as that video, but post-patch, I've hit a few points where the game becomes unplayable due to very similar stop-start insanity.

Actually some of my old friends from XBL were complaining about frame rates dropping after long play times. The difference is that on PS3 it can happen as soon as 5ish MB save file, on the Xbox I've heard that it takes like 12+ MB for the problem to start.
 
To the PS3 players posting here saying "LOL no problems here 90 hrs in!" how big is your save file?

I don't know if you noticed in the article, but he specifically mentions a certain file-size. Once you get over that line, the game turns to shit after 30 minutes-1 hour of play. My main dude is level 52 with 95 hrs, discovered almost every location and 13mb save file...game turns to shit in an hour, sometimes more. Playing on a PS3 Slim, but I highly doubt that has any effect.

Playing on a Slim but my save file is only 9.3MB before the patch it was around 9.3-9.5MB but then it was reduced by 1MB but now it's slowly climbing up again I'm currently at 92 hours.
 
It's pretty insulting that in addition to not making a public statement about the issue, they list that the patch improves "occasional performance issues"

I agree completely.

Bethesda should at least acknowledge that they fucked up. To bad they won't, businesses fucking suck nowadays.
 
So, PS3 gamers are a bunch of spoiled children, who knew!?

Don't get me wrong, bitch about online passes and stuff. But don't bitch about getting "360 ports" because they don't match your magical expectation levels. The market has shifted: PS3 is a minority focus, just be glad you're getting some of the titles that the 360 gets and buy them. It seems like some people on PS3 simply don't do that because "LOL XBOX PORT!" :/

People throwing their arms up and whining and going "why aren't they supporting us!?" when they attempt to (even if poorly) is crazy.

HOLY FUCK! Are you for real? WOW just WOW!
 
I have a 360 and PS3 and I went with the PS3 version solely for the fact that I haven't really used the system much since I got it and I thought it would be nice to have a game for it.

When I bought it, there were no indications there were game breaking bugs... But now...

I might return my copy.
 
Actually some of my old friends from XBL were complaining about frame rates dropping after long play times. The difference is that on PS3 it can happen as soon as 5ish MB save file, on the Xbox I've heard that it takes like 12+ MB for the problem to start.
Only started after the patch and after a long play session. So it hopefully is something I can fix by clearing the 360's cache. But, yeah, it made one encounter with three mages totally impossible. Was trying to act as a support healer to Lydia, but the insane stuttering meant that I couldn't aim at her at all. Ended up just having to run away (stuttering the whole time). Then it just randomly started stuttering while walking through the world, so I quit for the night. I'm hoping the cache clear will help. *fingers crossed*

And as reference, I'm about 40hrs in. Haven't checked how big my save file is.
 
People will argue about anything apparently even defending poor development practice.

Companies desire a good reputation. It allows them to reach mega-sales of a product with very little reviews building up a hype-engine to even FURTHER increase sales through momentum.

**** At no point does a company desire to put out a $60 product which consumers get upset about. It harbors ill will and a poor reputation about their development staff and QA.

Bethesda screwed up and they internally cannot be happy about it and they certainly wouldn't enjoy people saying "Be happy with what you have!" like some arguments in this thread.
 
I used to have the awful stuttering when I was around 30 hours in and 7-8 file size but since then my problems seem to have gone away and in some cases actually improve. I'm around 72 hours now with a 12mb save file and things have been working a lot better. I've actually witheld from downloading the patch for fear of problems coming back. I'm not saying I have no frame rate problems whatsoever, just that i maintain a more consistant rate now than before.

The only things I've done was delete my old saves
 
wow Betheshda have out done themselfs this time.

why was this issue not on the ps3 reviews for the game?

0fps hahahalolololol
 
wow Betheshda have out done themselfs this time.

why was this issue not on the ps3 reviews for the game?

Because it's an issue that doesn't rear it's head until 60+ hours of play, it's unlikely many reviewers can dedicate that much time to a single game.
 
Because it's an issue that doesn't rear it's head until 60+ hours of play, it's unlikely many reviewers can dedicate that much time to a single game.

I have a friend who works at a magazine, and they specifically requested the PS3 version to review as he only has a PS3 at home and wanted to see how it ran. They didn't oblige and only sent the 360 copy.

When he got his own PS3 retail copy, well......he wasn't happy after 30 hours or so.
 
For comparison, on the PC version I've only run into 2 bugs. Once a quest broke and I had to use a console command to trigger it, and now, after patch 1.2, I can't store anything in containers/trade anything with my followers :/.
 
The video post-patch actually showed pretty significant improvements save for that one part it dipped into 0fps range for about a second or so. Still, it stuttered significantly at the beginning of the video (I replayed the whole video after it was buffered to be sure).

I can personally attest to the 360 not having any of these problems after putting over 250 hours into this game. The only time saw stuttering (happened about twice) it was when I was in tight quarters and was fighting 5 or 6 skeletons in a pool of water while an explosion went off. The stuttering only occurred during the explosion effect.
 
I'm doing what Stew says, and what I usually do with Bethesda games. I just wait for the GOTY version.


Yeah, this has been suggested multiple times in this thread. For the record, the Fallout 3 GOTY version was a piece of shit with the same issue as being discussed here. I have no more confidence in a GOTY version than I do them patching this one.
 
People will argue about anything apparently even defending poor development practice.

Companies desire a good reputation. It allows them to reach mega-sales of a product with very little reviews building up a hype-engine to even FURTHER increase sales through momentum.

**** At no point does a company desire to put out a $60 product which consumers get upset about. It harbors ill will and a poor reputation about their development staff and QA.

Bethesda screwed up and they internally cannot be happy about it and they certainly wouldn't enjoy people saying "Be happy with what you have!" like some arguments in this thread.

This is true. Many just want to work people who are rightly upset into a senseless rage so they can start posting their popcorn gifs.
 
After close to 80hrs I've had issues with the 360 version. I get that stuttering stuff occasionally with it coming to a full hilt every once in a while before straightening back out. My save is at 13mb.

It doesn't happen constantly like the videos from eurogamer but man it still sucks. This is one of the first times I wish the next gen of consoles had come.
 
After close to 80hrs I've had issues with the 360 version. I get that stuttering stuff occasionally with it coming to a full hilt every once in a while before straightening back out. My save is at 13mb.

It doesn't happen constantly like the videos from eurogamer but man it still sucks. This is one of the first times I wish the next gen of consoles had come.

On 360 slim playing off the disc. You?
 
I have a friend who works at a magazine, and they specifically requested the PS3 version to review as he only has a PS3 at home and wanted to see how it ran. They didn't oblige and only sent the 360 copy.

When he got his own PS3 retail copy, well......he wasn't happy after 30 hours or so.
Yeah, a big red flag for me was the complete lack of any media of the PS3 version. I also remember seeing a video from the IGN PS3 channel were they had just gotten their PS3 copy(ies) in on the Friday the game released.
 
If Bethesda can't release a multiplatform game that works on all of the platforms it can play on, then it will never release a game of the year. Or even a great game.

I think they need to playtest the shit out of their next game, and I don't care if it adds another year to the game's release.
 
Returned it and got Rayman. Again Gamestop at least was very understanding about it and did not care at all to let me swap it out.
 
Wow. Even disregarding framerate, the game looks like absolute shit. I've been holding off on this game, until I build a new gaming rig. No way I get this for either console.
 
**** At no point does a company desire to put out a $60 product which consumers get upset about. It harbors ill will and a poor reputation about their development staff and QA.

Then why do they keep doing it game after game after game after game?

Answer: Because they can get away with it.

They send out the 360 version to reviewers, who don't usually play the game for 60 hours before they review it anyway, and count on great reviews and good word of mouth from players who haven't run into the problems yet to raise their sales. And AAA game sales nowadays are front-loaded enough that by the time reviewers or gamers notice these problems and the conversation starts to turn around, they've already got most of the revenue they're going to get out of the title.
 
Wow. Even disregarding framerate, the game looks like absolute shit. I've been holding off on this game, until I build a new gaming rig. No way I get this for either console.

Nah. Skyrim is pretty damn awesome to look at. I had the same first impression you had.
 
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