Topic: Finally about to play Gran Turismo 5 after taking nearly a day to update and...

[Miyamoto]

...install. OK, so my internet speed is far from great but this is beyond ridiculous. I put the game in at 23:00 last night and it hit me with a 650mb download so I left it and watched the hockey (Devils won, woohoo) came back at about 02:30am and the update hadn't finished so I went to bed. Checked on it this morning and it was downloading some new file that was about 1.1GB, so I left it and went to work. I've come home and it's finally ready.


Sony fail. Hope it was worth the wait. Now just to pick which podcast to listen to while I play.

[TJ Spyke]

Sony's download speed for the PS3 is ridiculous, especially compared to the Xbox 360. It doesn't help PS3 downloads stop when you are watching a DVD or Blu-ray Disc.

[Miyamoto]

I've never had a problem with updates on the 360 either. It's getting to the point now where if a game is even only a couple of months old then i know there'll be a lengthy download with the PS 3.

[Ian Sane]

I don't get why the PS3 is so slow with updates.  It feels like dial-up speeds.  It would also be nice if you could update in the background or be allowed to do it later.  If I don't play for a bit and decide to load up the PS3 for a quick play session I can't because the damn thing will want to update first.  It isn't like Windows just halts and makes you update it before you can do anything.  You get to pick when to put those in place.

[Adrock]

I thought you can download in the background. My experience is that it's even slower doing it that way. The only time i've had to download any large file was when Sony gave out those free games after the PSN outage. Still, it's hard to complain when they gave me free **** for something I barely used outside of Netflix.

[TJ Spyke]

You can download in the background, but it pauses when you are watching a DVD or Blu-ray Disc (haven't tried it while playing a game).

[Spak-Spang]

I think this is a case of you get what you pay for.  MS you pay for a premium download service...and you get the goods.

[Chozo Ghost]

Sony's download speed for the PS3 is ridiculous, especially compared to the Xbox 360. It doesn't help PS3 downloads stop when you are watching a DVD or Blu-ray Disc.

And the irony here is the whole point behind the Cell processor was that it would have awesome multi-tasking capability. How can downloading an update be so taxing to the system that it literally can't do anything else while that download is in progress? Even the first computer I ever owned which was a Pentium 1 with only 32MB of RAM could download something and do something else, so there is no reason the PS3 shouldn't be able to. Its not that the system can't, its just Sony being dicks (as usual).

[broodwars]

You can download in the background, but it pauses when you are watching a DVD or Blu-ray Disc (haven't tried it while playing a game).

When you're playing a PS3 disc-based game, Queued Downloads will proceed as normal in the vast majority of cases (I've seen only a couple of times over the past few years where a disc-based game will pause downloads).  Bizarrely, though, you can't download files in the background while playing PSN downloaded titles.

And yeah, PSN download speeds are atrocious and random, and they're something I rant about on Twitter every time a major PSN title releases on the network.  Still, I'll accept a little inconvenience in exchange for not being fleeced by Microsoft for the "privilege" of playing games I already paid for online.  On that subject, it's kind of funny that EA makes a big deal about its Online Passes on its 360 titles, because they hold absolutely no value whatsoever if you're like me and aren't an Xbox LIVE Gold subscriber.  So unless I really want to make sure that the dev team gets my money, there's really no reason for me to not buy Used on my occasional 360 title.