I've been playing Skyrim for a while on the PS3, until it literally became unplayable. 90-120 second load times from a house to the world, hard lock ups, and such other bullshit, along with deleting my save games and me losing 15 hours. So I think I'm gonna just buy it again on the Xbox 360. Will I notice a marked difference, at least in regards to how it actually plays as a videogame, and not a slideshow?

It plays fine on 360. If PC is an option Id highly suggest that but as far as consoles go 360 is a very viable option to play. I think you can even install it now.

@Matoya: So let me get this straight. You're basically gonna reward the developers and the publishers for knowingly selling you a defective product by buy the same product again?

My experiences with the 360 version have been silky-smooth. The only issue I've had was with Patch 1.2, where the bookcases wouldn't work and one dragon flew backwards as I left the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary. Two glitches in my thirty hours of play time isn't bad, in my opinion. I had no idea the PS3 version was so broken and buggy, even still. I heard about some issues with it but never that many.

@Mordukai said:

@Matoya: So let me get this straight. You're basically gonna reward the developers and the publishers for knowingly selling you a defective product by buy the same product again?

I'd buy it second hand on the cheap so as to not reward them for a shit port. If you'd played the PS3 version, you'd get it.

I haven't had any problems with the 360 version. Pretty shitty that you would have to buy it again though.

@Matoya said:

@Mordukai said:

@Matoya: So let me get this straight. You're basically gonna reward the developers and the publishers for knowingly selling you a defective product by buy the same product again?

I'd buy it second hand on the cheap so as to not reward them for a shit port. If you'd played the PS3 version, you'd get it.

Then go for it. I don't think anyone here will blame you for getting it used.

Ever since that last patch on 360, that version is totally fine. No issues really, solid, smooth framerate of 30, load times are quick enough (And coming from the atrocious PS3 version, are phenomenal). Of course, the PC version is the best way to go if that option is available to you and you have a high-end enough rig. The ability to run that game at a higher resolution, at 60FPS and with mod support is THE way to play that game, and after having sunk 80 or so hours into that version myself, it's hard to look and play the 360 version now because the PC version just looks so, so good.

I played through Fallout 3 and Fallout NV on PS3 and I completed everything in both. After about 50-60 hours mark in both cases the games became a complete pain in the ass to play. I kept on playing though and only two reasons for doing so was I did not have an option, and those games were so damn fun.

However, for Skyrim I bought the PC version since I now have a shiny new high-spec laptop and gotta say; at least from PS3 to PC, the difference is immense! Load times are almost gone completely, silky smooth, better looking etc. Only thing left are the usual Bethesda junk (floating rocks/bushes, gaps in levels etc), but man, the playing experience is so much better. I will basically never go back to playing a Bethesda game on consoles again. They just can't make console games for shit! lol

@PolygonSlayer said:

I played through Fallout 3 and Fallout NV on PS3 and I completed everything in both. After about 50-60 hours mark in both cases the games became a complete pain in the ass to play. I kept on playing though and only two reasons for doing so was I did not have an option, and those games were so damn fun.

However, for Skyrim I bought the PC version since I now have a shiny new high-spec laptop and gotta say; at least from PS3 to PC, the difference is immense! Load times are almost gone completely, silky smooth, better looking etc. Only thing left are the usual Bethesda junk (floating rocks/bushes, gaps in levels etc), but man, the playing experience is so much better. I will basically never go back to playing a Bethesda game on consoles again. They just can't make console games for shit! lol

I think it is the other way around, the games they make are so grand in scale the consoles just can't handle them, which is why shitty things like this happen. The PC version works perfectly, yet it's a port of the console version.

It's great on 360. I've had like three lockups in 60 hours.

@AlexW00d: I disagree. It's the fact that's it's running on an engine that was not made for consoles. There is not excuse for the complete bugginess that Bethesda games have sometimes on consoles. And the PC version is not a port, it just happens to be designed in a way that makes it feel more console like, which makes sense. This has always been one of Bethesdas bad points, engines, even on PC.

@Matoya:

I actually had this same issue. I bought the PS3 version because game sites were going "OMFG! The PS3 version is so much better than the 360 version!!!1" before the game's release, and then quickly started releasing info about the poor PS3 port after the game had already been released. I was pretty pissed that I got "tricked" into buying the wrong version. Anyway.. I'm a regular at my local gamestop, so they did me a solid and let me swap out the PS3 version for a brand new 360 version. That's definitely not standard, but I'm glad I asked.

To answer your question, there's a definite improvement on the 360 over the PS3. The game runs incredibly smooth (whoever said that the 360 has horrible tearing issues is full of it, IMO) and saves almost instantly (whereas saving took like 15 seconds or something on the PS3, even from the very start of the game). The texture streaming issue is a definite problem though, so you'll want to play it off the disc instead of an install. I hear the new patch doesn't completely fix it either, even though it was supposed to. However, I noticed the texture problem on the PS3 as well. In fact, I thought the game was actually uglier than Oblivion for a good while before I had paused the game to go do something and then when I came back the textures had all magically loaded and the game was suddenly pretty!

Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope that helps.

@tayruh said:

@Matoya:

I actually had this same issue. I bought the PS3 version because game sites were going "OMFG! The PS3 version is so much better than the 360 version!!!1" before the game's release, and then quickly started releasing info about the poor PS3 port after the game had already been released. I was pretty pissed that I got "tricked" into buying the wrong version. Anyway.. I'm a regular at my local gamestop, so they did me a solid and let me swap out the PS3 version for a brand new 360 version. That's definitely not standard, but I'm glad I asked.

To answer your question, there's a definite improvement on the 360 over the PS3. The game runs incredibly smooth (whoever said that the 360 has horrible tearing issues is full of it, IMO) and saves almost instantly (whereas saving took like 15 seconds or something on the PS3, even from the very start of the game). The texture streaming issue is a definite problem though, so you'll want to play it off the disc instead of an install. I hear the new patch doesn't completely fix it either, even though it was supposed to. However, I noticed the texture problem on the PS3 as well. In fact, I thought the game was actually uglier than Oblivion for a good while because I paused the game to go do something and then when I came back the textures had all magically loaded and the game was suddenly pretty!

Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope that helps.

I actually had severe tearing appear suddenly on my file. It was at the bottom 1/3 of the screen, and was relentless. It was constant no matter what was happening. I cleared the cache then cleared Skyrim's cache (LB+RB+X until the Beth logo appears), and it went away. So they weren't full of it, it just seems to be completely random, and apparently temporary.

I installed with the new patch, and theres no streaming issues. If you're still getting them, install to a flash drive and it'll run fine.

On topic: Get it on 360. It's great!

Just get it on the 360. Speaking as someone who plays it on the 360 and PC; the 360 port is incredibly good.

@PolygonSlayer said:

@AlexW00d: I disagree. It's the fact that's it's running on an engine that was not made for consoles. There is not excuse for the complete bugginess that Bethesda games have sometimes on consoles. And the PC version is not a port, it just happens to be designed in a way that makes it feel more console like, which makes sense. This has always been one of Bethesdas bad points, engines, even on PC.

No it's not. It's running on what everyone believes to be an updated version of Gamebryo, an engine that has functioned fine on the consoles before, just not in Bethesda games, much smaller games. If the consoles had more memory, the lack of which is what causes all of the problems, then the games would run much smoother, and with much less hassle. And the PC version is a port, hence the shitty 512*512 textures.

@AlexW00d: So if a version of a game has less resolution on textures than that system can handle it makes it a port? man, definitions have changed these days. So is the PS3 version a port of the Xbox version then? or the Xbox version a port of the PS3 version? Nope, I still disagree with you on this point. It is not a port, there are 3 versions of the same game, released at the same time, using a heavily modified engine which was not designed to handle large open worlds like this. You can argue that the consoles have way too little RAM (which is a pain in the ass to work with, I can attest to that!), but if they had used an engine designed for the platforms from scratch I don't think there is much doubt that it would run a hell of a lot better. Or if they really wanted to improve the console version performance, but still use this shitty engine they could have saved memory by cutting down on the graphics. There is a damn good reasons you don't see other hugely open-world console games use this engine.

@PolygonSlayer: Just want to point out to those that don't know, its not that Bethesda can't code, look at the renderer, they coded that its fantastic.But game logic is handled by GameBryo(which powered Morrowind). Its just not a good product.

Hopefully Zenimax will allow them some time off (waay extended dev cycle for next game) to build an actual engine or just use ID Tech 5.

@EdIsCool: Yeah, no doubt they have coders that can code, and fantastic artists! However, the coders have to work with what is already a mess of an engine. There is only so much they can do. I understand their situation, but they really should have ditched that engine a long time ago, especially considering the scope of their games and that they started to focus more on their console versions. Hopefully this is something they are working on for future titles :)

@Melvargh said:

I actually had severe tearing appear suddenly on my file. It was at the bottom 1/3 of the screen, and was relentless.

Ah. I stand corrected. My copy seemed to work fine right out of the box. It's strange that clearing the cache seemed fix it, but I'm glad it worked for you. :)

I installed with the new patch, and theres no streaming issues. If you're still getting them, install to a flash drive and it'll run fine.

I was just taking what other people had said at face value. I'm not thrilled about some of the bugs that were introduced with the 1.2 patch that 1.3 hasn't fixed yet, so I'm still rocking the 1.1 version, which unfortunately means I have the streaming bug still. Oh well.

I haven't noticed any new bugs in 1.3.

Not saying they aren't there but they have yet to impact my game.

I never had a problem with Skyrim on the 360, except that the last patch replaced my swords with kittens and my arrows scream obscenities.

@PolygonSlayer said:

@AlexW00d: I disagree. It's the fact that's it's running on an engine that was not made for consoles. There is not excuse for the complete bugginess that Bethesda games have sometimes on consoles. And the PC version is not a port, it just happens to be designed in a way that makes it feel more console like, which makes sense. This has always been one of Bethesdas bad points, engines, even on PC.

Correction. PC version is a port. Tod Howard couldn't resist telling everyone that the lead platform was the 360 at every chance he got. Go do some digging. You'll that I'm right.

@Mordukai: Having a lead platform does not mean the other versions are ports! The game was designed from day 1 to run on all 3 platforms, using an engine available on all said platforms. Hence, no "porting" was involved in making it run on a piece of hardware that it was not initially intended to run on.

The term 'port' has become real loose lately I gotta say.

I haven't had any major problems with the 360 version of the game except that there has been a guy stuck in the same in the road waste deep for quite a while now. I thought he would be able to get out when I saved and reloaded but he has been there through several saves and loads since. He seems pretty happy though. I am just afraid that he will be a major part somewhere along the quest and that he will be dead or something before I need him.

90-120 seconds? I've heard the PS3 version is bad but that's far worse than I imagined. Bethesda is way to big for this kind of shit.

I don't know about the Xbox-version. (But the PC version is nice and dandy. The only thing I can complain about is the shadows, modding it will only make it slightly better. But that's nothing compared to your problems, of course.)

I've had no problem with Skyrim on the 360 version. Sucks to hear what PS3 gamers are going through, my sympathies.