Amazed at the amount of false promises and for the love of Pete...

After seeing a number of articles on Sony and Microsoft and how they are "working on" and "wish-listing" new features for their respective consoles, I must admit, I am a little fed up. When I watched the PS4 press conference last year ,they made it seem like load times where a thing of the past and games would be seamlessly loaded in the background. Well, so far, load times are as present as ever and I am not seeing real improvements in online management of downloadable games. It still takes forever to download patches and you are still left waiting for updates. What happened to "background downloading" and a second processor that can always downloading withut needing to interrupt your gaming?

I call B.S. Both Sony and MS have given out a lot of false promises with little or no evidence of improved management of online content, load times, etc. You still need to download and wait for a 350MB patch on day one. What happened MS? With the 360 the patches were very small and fast, but with the new and improved Xbox One, the patches are about the same size as the disc you bought at Walmart. And even if you downloaded the game digitally, you still have to wait for another "update" of anywhere from 300MB to several GB. And that is only tolerable if you have a good bandwidth ISP. What about the folk who have lower bandwidth connections. It must be incredibly frustrating.

Anyway, I just think the first few months with these "next gen" consoles are plagued with the exact same problems as the previous generation. I have to ask myself "Why do you keep reinventing the wheel instead of making incremental improvements?"

Ok, end of rant but I am still waiting for better/reduced load times. For the love of Pete, where are my improved load times?

It takes you an hour to download a 300 MB patch? Either your console(s) is (are) defective or your internet is slow. My PS4 games and system updates don't take very long. Can take anywhere from 2-15 minutes (damn game patches are so big) but I don't mind it since my games usually update while I'm asleep or just not on it. So go get PS+, problem solved.

As for load times, I suppose you mean in-game loading screens? Isn't that up to the developer and they're coding skills or something? Games take significantly less time to load then they did on PS3 and that so that's a non issue to me.

There is a valid point in the OP's argument in that these promised internet features that Microsoft and Sony touted can really only work as advertised if you have the internet speed and stability for optimal support. Anything less, and it's not as impressive. And unlike what Sony and (especially) Microsoft would like to believe, there are large swaths of the planet that simply do not have the sorts of internet speeds that can be found in places like metropolitan San Francisco.

As for loading times, well, that's not all up to the coding. A console can only load data as fast as it can read it from a disc, whether that be a DVD, Blu-ray, or HDD. Even if you go the all-digital route and don't buy any disc-based games, games can only be loaded as quickly as the console is capable of doing so, not including poor optimization of a game's code that governs when loading occurs and what data is loaded.

maybe if we are talking about loading compared to last gen into this current gen then it's a slight improvement in load time and network speed. But it could all be made better, which is where I'm still waiting for one of these companies to start going iterative like iphone/ipad update model. The next version of these consoles, not the slim but actual hardware updates to speed everything up.

But yeah, everyone is giving these companies a pass over these promises

i've had no problems with background updates, they just happen and install without me even needing to worry. As for loading times, that's more on the developers.

Well, first off, MS has a small download requirement for their patches on 360 because it was, almost, 10 years ago the system was created. And, well, connections weren't as good back then as they are now. Plus, the things that needed to be changed were minor in comparison to the things that were being changed later on. Developers never liked the idea because it limited what they could do with a patch. Which is why it is gone. It was too limited of a system. And a flawed idea.

If 300MB is taking an hour to download it is your connection. For me, 300MB is around 3-5 minutes. If that. It's on your end here, dude.

Load times? Well, for one, HDD read speeds haven't improved much over the years. SSD's exists but it's too prohibitive from a cost standpoint. And, you have 5GB of RAM you need to populate with 70-90MB of read speed from the HDD. Some games will priorities this going forward. Almost everything is still made with a 360/PS3 in mind. That may change down the line. Some games may not have any loads outside the initial load into the game. Depends on what the devs do.

@padrino: Load times are going to be a thing as long as discs are our primary method of storage. I don't know where they claimed that the PS4 and Xbox One would have no load times, but if they did, it was automatically false. Your nearly instant load times exist on SSD's installed in expensive PC's (and I'm not being a dick, I'm just stating fact). These new consoles probably do improve load times, but not by that much.

And like load times, downloading patches is never not going to be a thing. Gotta get used to it. If I'm not mistaken, both Sony and MS have ways for their consoles to download patches automatically at certain times of the day. Perhaps you should look into that? Either way, a 350 MB patch isn't really that big. If it's taking you an hour to download, then there's a problem somewhere or your internet is slow.

@awesomeusername: That was an exaggeration to be sure. But sometimes its not your speed that is the problem, its the servers. When a game first comes out, everyone is trying to download at the same time and the servers can get slow. What I was thinking of is downloading the whole game + patches when you buy digitally. Also, some game "updates" are 50% or more the size of the disc you bought. I can't remember which game but I insalled the disk (40Gb) and then the day one update was at least 20G. So, what is the point of the disc? We have never seen game updates and day one patches of this size before.

For those with fast internet, downloads are not a real issue. My real disapointment is with in-game level load times. Yes, this is for the game dev to figure out but the hardware should make it easy achieve and I am guessing that is not the case or the devs are just lazy. Either way, fast level load times are yet to be realized with the current gen.

Any PC gamer is going to call BS on the instant loading thing. SSDs give you that on PC so unless either Sony or Microsoft are willing to put that in their systems it's very unlikely you'll see that. Hell the HDDs in there by default are crappy 5400 rpm laptop drives.

@padrino: As games get bigger and have more assists it will take longer for them to load... Smaller games with a lot less assists barely have any load times at all. Have you played Resogun?

Even though they haven't gotten around to improving load times (if they ever do) at least they've been updating regularly. Now I don't know if updating you console every month (Xone monthly updates) is a good or bad thing but at least it's something.

Also I think load times are more of a developer problem than a hardware problem. Forza 5 has actually improved their load times over time. They are still a bit long but back in January they were just unbearable. I hope as more games are made for the systems devs will learn how to improve or mask load times.

This is the gaming industry after all, I'm still waiting to scan in my skateboard into my tony hawk games....

Dont worry...they are moving into a new office and are still trying to work the kinks out.

@padrino: Then you my friend would have been SUUUUUUUUUPER pissed after all the promises and broken idea's that 360 and Ps3 was shown off doing.

These feature on the Xbone and Ps4 are not implemented/going to be/badly implemented. Which is a far better world than the promises both consoles AND devs of game promised. Some stuff stick out like Killzone 2 reveal trailer vs actual game, while others is Mercenaries 2 promise of real time fluids. They were saying fuel from a car would fall out and leak in real time and flow like real fuel for you to light on fire.

Cast a few hundred other promises like that and the end results of consoles and games is very different.

This time around they decided to not promise us the stars and instead tried to be realistic. Even then some of it was fantasy or not that great.

Rayman has no load times.

I agree. The PS4 still feels like it's in diapers. It should at least be in trainers by now. I mean, the lifespan if these consoles is probably going to be between 5 and 10 years so honestly it should already be wearing pants. Yeah...that sounds right. The new consoles should be in pants by now.

But... these modern consoles are faster, and technically they have improved loading times. But they have to load a lot more than the PS3 and 360 ever did, and they're still using discs and 5400RPM HDD's to do it. I'm sorry, you're just not going to get those fast load times that you want using the kind of technology they have to use to keep console prices reasonable.

So it's the quantity of the promises and not the quality of the promises you find amazing?

Theres this little motto from a long time ago called buyer beware. I mean seriously, who takes anything from a salesman at their word? Actually, i have to go restock my inventory of magic beans. I have a shop right outside Gamestop here in town where i am making a killing.

So far, the only promise that the consoles have made that matters is that they'd be worth buying. To this point, that promise remains unfulfilled.

If you can remember what they were like when they launched, 360/PS3 were waaaaaaay different when they launched. Xone/PS4 will be like different consoles in a few years, but until then yeah they are kinda bare-bones. That's just the reality of a deadline to get them to market, unfortunately :(

I'm semi-sure they'll catch up more in a year or two.

Meanwhile, Steam still has an amazing game management system. And it's patching? Yep, that shit runs in the background too. Granted you have to manually restart it if you start a game.

test

Fuck these new consoles, also... i feel naked without my gold medal.