Topic: So, I played a PS3...

[UncleBob]

I played a PlayStation 3 for the first time tonight.  Well, I've poked around with our demo unit at the store, but that doesn't really count.

A friend of mine got a PS3 for Christmas from his parents (who spoil him rotten...)

He's only ever purchased one game for it - and it's never been opened.
He mostly uses it as a BluRay player.

Well, I heard from CAG that Walmart had discounted the PS3 Buzz! trivia game to $20.  We've both wanted to play it, but he had never wanted to spend $60 on it.  While I was out and about, I found a Walmart that actually had one in stock, so I grabbed it.

We played it tonight.  When we popped in the disc, it said we had to do some system update.  Took over 40 minutes.  Fun.  So, we watched the first episode of Andy Richter's show.  Came back, it still wasn't done.  So we played some Mario vs. Luigi.  When it was finally done, we played a regular round of trivia.  Then, we tried to go online to download some quizzes.  Had to perform another system update.  Took over half an hour.  Played some more Mario vs. Luigi.  Then, we played some user created quizzes.  Half the ones we tried to download would give us an error message that there was an error and they couldn't be downloaded at this time.

It was loads of fun.  Loads, as in, we waited around for everything to load....

[S-U-P-E-R]

[ThePerm]

next time don't connect your system online when you want to play a new game

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

online is bad

[NWR_DrewMG]

I would stare at a loading screen for a week if after it was done, I got to play The Last Guardian.

[broodwars]

This sounds more like a problem with the internet connection than with the PS3 itself.  When I got my PS3 a few months ago, I had to do two system updates and I'd be surprised if it took me 40 minutes to do the entire "first-time startup" process.  Personally, I find the installation times for the individual games much worse, even moreso when there's an update online to that game.

Seriously, though, if you think that update/install times are bad on the PS3 never play a PC game.

[TJ Spyke]

The constant downloads the system requires is indeed annoying and no reason they should be so long when Microsoft has proven you can have large system updates be done quickly.

I also use my system mainly as a Blu-ray Disc player. I only have 2 games for the system and both were ones I got when I bought the system in November (the over-rated LittleBigPlanet and the waste-of-$70 The Eye of Judgment).

[broodwars]

By the way, something I highly recommend for new PS3 users is that you go to the PSN store and just download everything that strikes your fancy that's free.  Videos, demos, PS3 themes, songs, whatever interests you.  You can download it all in the background and then go play a game or something while you wait.  Then when you come back later you can just play with all the stuff you downloaded.  It's a unique experience you'll never have on a Nintendo platform, that's for sure.

[TJ Spyke]

Stuff on PS3 is super slow in downloading though. They are also very large, almost every PS3 demo is at least 600MB and many are over 1GB.

[NWR_DrewMG]

360 demos are similar in size.

[TJ Spyke]

Some, not most. I am not the only one to notice that even demos that are of a similar size download much faster on the Xbox 360.

[KDR_11k]

When I got my 360 I took about two hours to get all that account and EULA and whatnot bullshit sorted out before I could even download a demo.

[NWR_DrewMG]

I have no reference for download speed, and what I've heard more or less corroborates this.  I still think that most of the full game demos I've downloaded on the 360 are between 800 MB and 1.2 GB. 

But this is about the PS3, and how slow the download speeds are combined with how frequent the mandatory updates are - that's got to be frustrating.

[Ian Sane]

Hey I've got a PS3!  I think I'll get... Buzz!?  What?  THAT is the game you guys decided to get?

I've played the PS3 a few times at a co-workers house.  We didn't have to deal with installing or upgrading anything but I did notice the load times were pretty irritating.  But I find that with most consoles.  Nintendo seems to be quite exceptional in that they consider load times a priority and have tried to minimize them on both of their optical disc consoles.  Maybe Sony doesn't care because the original  Playstation had them but it didn't seem to have any effect on that console's massive success.  They might think that people are just willing to deal with them.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

You have a metric asston of graphical assets to load into memory, there's more that needs to be loaded.  High poly HD gaming overshot the available bandwidth of mainstream disc streaming technology.

Wii games, have nothing to load in comparison.

[NWR_DrewMG]

I have no real beefs about the loading times on my 360, especially after they implemented hard disk install.  It's pretty comparable to last gen.  Nintendo has always been ahead of the curve on this.  I do notice, however, that the larger Wii discs take considerably longer to load content from than the smaller GC discs.  Brawl vs. Melee is a great example of that.

[bustin98]

I would have to say that the PSN is a lot slower than the Xbox Marketplace. But, you do get what you pay for.

The only game I dislike regarding loading is Metal Gear Solid 4. Not because there are loading screens, but because they interrupt the game when an initial install to the HDD could have bypassed that bullshit.

When I got my PS3 the PSN game Pain was free. Its a decent party game, people have fun with it. But it seems like every time it gets turned on there is an update for it. Its frustrating, especially when its not apparent why there is an update for the title.

[UncleBob]

My main problem is the first update was *required* before it would let us play the game.  I don't think it was a download of any kind either - I think it was something installed from the disc, as my friend hadn't logged onto the PlayStation Network until we wanted to try some of the online quizzes.

Come on though - a 40 minute install just to play a trivia game?

There are times when I just sit down to play a game for a quick 30 minutes.

Hey I've got a PS3!  I think I'll get... Buzz!?  What?  THAT is the game you guys decided to get?

Well, I'm sorry our choice of games don't suit you, Ian.

We like trivia and we like pitting ourselves against each other (usually in Mario vs. Luigi/NSMB).  With trivia on the best Television show ever (24), we had wanted to play it.  For $20, it couldn't be passed up.

[EasyCure]

I played a PlayStation 3 for the first time tonight.  Well, I've poked around with our demo unit at the store, but that doesn't really count.

No one touch the demo unit at his wal*mart cuz he's had sex with it. You read it here first folks.

It was loads of fun.  Loads, as in...

see!

[broodwars]

A lot of my games have had mandatory installs, so I haven't noticed that bad of loading times among my PS3 games except for Bioshock, but that game's always had some bad loading times even on PC.  Oh yeah, and it's pretty ridiculous on LittleBigPlanet as well, made even worse by the fact that you often can't even tell it's loading till the pod pops open and it loads the level.  I did notice a fairly dramatic decrease in load times on Valkyria Chronicles when I did the optional install, though. 

My big issue with PS3 games is not so much the load times but the the Install time when you first put the game in, something that's become the norm rather than the exception these days (especially if the game got a Trophy pack later on).  You can watch a decently-long anime episode in the time it takes Valkyria Chronicles to install (which is kind of appropriate when you think about how VC is presented), but so long as the install has an effect on decreasing the overall load times I don't mind sitting through such tedium once.

Then apparently you have stuff like Ghostbusters (according to IGN), which has a mandatory 8-minute install on the PS3 that has no effect on the loading times.   

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

What's with this generation.

[UltimatePartyBear]

Then apparently you have stuff like Ghostbusters (according to IGN), which has a mandatory 8-minute install on the PS3 that has no effect on the loading times.  

If it's mandatory, how could anyone tell it doesn't help?

I spend install time reading the manual, just like I've always done with PC games.

[broodwars]

Then apparently you have stuff like Ghostbusters (according to IGN), which has a mandatory 8-minute install on the PS3 that has no effect on the loading times.   

If it's mandatory, how could anyone tell it doesn't help?

I spend install time reading the manual, just like I've always done with PC games.

The reviewer at IGN compared the load times for the 360 and PS3 versions, with the latter having the mandatory install.  According to him, the load times are identical.

[ShyGuy]

Blu Ray? More like Slow Ray amirite?

At least PS3 has Home...

[TJ Spyke]

Home is so disappointing (and slow as hell last time I used it).

The mandatory install some PS3 games have are ridiculous. Even when they decrease load times (which they don't always do), it's often only 1 or 2 seconds faster (which is not worth a 30+ minute install).