Ben-DutkaIt's starting to get to the point where I look at the back of a box, see the hard drive requirement, and just cringe.
Yes, I'm aware of why it can be necessary. Yes, I'm aware it can allow the game to run smoother and with fewer interruptions. I understand the reasons behind it and corresponding benefits, so don't start the lecture. I simply find the increased frequency and size of these installs really annoying…so sue me.
We've just learned that next week's hotly anticipated Dishonored will have a 5GB install on the PS3 . Well, great. So what else is new? It wasn't that long ago – only a few years, really – where huge mandatory installs were absolutely not the norm; in fact, they were exceedingly rare. You may remember when people freaked out at the size of the MGS4 install. These days, though, it gets more and more common with every passing week.
And with a very busy fall and a very full hard drive, I'll either have to start deleting some old install data or get a new HDD. One of the reasons I got away from PC gaming was because of all the extra sh** one has to go through just to play a game, and now a lot of it is showing up on consoles. Updates, installs, patches, etc. And in all actuality, I'd almost rather have a few extra breaks during the gameplay session; I don't have a problem with loading screens and I never really have, and it would save valuable hard drive space. I know I'm in the minority but I honestly can't remember a title in the past few months that didn't require an install on my PS3.
I also have to say that I never really had a problem with over-long loading times this generation before everything required an install. It would've been one thing if the loading times early on were just terrible, and really hindered the flow of a game. But I can't seem to remember too many titles with annoying loading. Yeah, I know bigger projects often require installs for other reasons, but some of the best games this generation have not required me to put a bunch of stuff on my hard drive. That's all I'm saying.
The installs never bothered me. I only install the games I'm playing and when I'm done it gets deleted. I also just recently upgraded to a 1tb HDD so I have plenty of space.
I hear ya Ben. My 250GB drive on my old PS3 was damn near full up with game installs and full games downloaded from PSN (thank you Plus membership)
And it sure is disappointing to get home with that new game, unwrap it, excitedly pop the disc in and… wait 5-20 min for it to install. Major buzzkill.
Recently when I bought the new Slim PS3 I ditched the 250GB drive it came with and installed a 750GB drive. Interestingly, the PS3 only reads 620GB of free space after formatting… but that should still last me a good long while 😉
620GB from 750GB, that's a lot of open free space. Idk, but maybe someday else here can give us a full insight about this.
Already got the answer thanks Beamboom.
its the math. 1024 is the size of a gb. it goes from the old 256 size to 512 to 1024. 512 being half a gb. 2048 is 2 gb. but they are selling it by 1000 being a gb because the average consumer is to stupid to do the math with the extra 24 on every gb. a tb is not actually 1000 gb. its more like 919 or something. as the drive gets bigger there are more extra 24's being taken from the total.
frylock. I'm a long time IT guy and well versed with the manufacturers GB. What's interesting here is that there's an additional 70+GB beyond the math difference that's unaccounted for.
There are 1024 bytes to a kilobyte. A drive advertised as 750GB should work out to about 698 real gigabytes. So there is more going on here than the normal 1024 math discrepancy.
I think the PS3 has some sort of cap on it. I'd be curious to know if anyone has installed a 1TB drive in their PS3 and what their usable space is.
edit: It does say in the system information that there is 620/698 after formatting. so it does recognize the proper size of the drive, just only shows 620 of it as available…
Last edited by gumbi on 10/4/2012 3:02:40 PM
Makes you wonder if this will continue next generation, I bet it does. We will just have larger standard hard drives then. I've been aces with 500gigs so these don't really bother me. I just have to plan ahead and do the installs long before I plan to play, so I'll put it in and then go do some laundry or make dinner so it's ready to play when I'm free.
I can't say it drives me that nuts. Being a PC gamer, it's been the norm as long as I can remember. Now, file size wasn't so hefty, but neither were HDDs back then.
gumbi,
My 1T HD upgrade only gave me 928GB's once installed.
I'm guessing the PS3 uses the remainder for OS &/or security-anti-piracy, but I don't really know.
I'm hoping Highlander can elaborate on what the reason is that we don't get the full GB's as being listed on the HD upgrades.
I think your right man, I remember my new 80GB only showing 71GB of free space.
I'm not Highlander, but I think I still can help:
It's a matter of different ways to count. Hard drive manufacturers are using our decimal system counting one kilo as 1000, while the computer count using the binary system therefore a kilo becomes 1024.
Therefore, if we take a 250gb hard drive as an example, it's called 250 gb because it has a capacity of approx 250 thousand mill bytes, but using the binary system those bytes counts up to a total of approx 238gb.
So it's just a question of two different ways of counting, and manufacturers of course choose the way that gives the highest number. 🙂
Last edited by Beamboom on 10/4/2012 1:06:20 PM
Thanks Beamboom,
It's semi-misleading crap like this that pisses me off, just like TV manufacturer who claim their TV's are 42' when they're not, & they are actually counting it diagonally instead of straight across like they should be.
Ought to be a law against that kind of BS advertising.
bikersaint. Yep, a 1TB drive should work out to about 930GB of real space. Like Beamboom said, this is because of the old manufacturers GB which divides by 1000 instead of the proper 1024.
A 750GB drive should be about 698, but my PS3 only sees 620 of it as free space. This was immediately after formatting, before installing anything. The PS3 showed 620/698 disk usage. What's it doing with the other 70+GB I wonder?
Do you remember what your PS3 said after you first installed the 1TB drive? did it show 928/928 as available space? or did it block/reserve a portion of that free space?
So, my knowledgeable friend Google tells me that the PS3 takes about 10 percent off the top and reserves it for internal use. So the bigger the drive you install, the more space the PS3 reserves.
Based on my experience working with PC's, the answer for this may have to do with how the PS3 manages it's filesystem. If it does any kind of optimizing or defragmenting then it will need some free space for shuffling the file fragments around. And the bigger the drive, the more it will need to accomplish this.
Highlander! where you at man?
I seriously doubt there are such tools as defrag running on the PS3, although it would be wise if it uses the ancient FAT32 file system.
I would rather guess it is a consequence of some sort of encrypting, to avoid hacking of the data on the disc.
But this is pure speculation on my part. It's a plausible explanation though.
Last edited by Beamboom on 10/5/2012 3:03:04 PM
You and me both Ben! Since my back log is so long, it usually takes me 20-30 days before I can get into a new game…ie, I just got Sleeping Dogs last week (great review by the way – main reason I got it) and when I wanted to play, it wanted to download the 2 updates needed to play it. It took 30 mins to download and install both updates which by the time it was done, I was no longer interesting in playing…I shut it off and waited till the next night.
What happened to the days when you just threw in the game, hit start, and were on your way to enjoying hours of fun?
Sometimes I get in a mood where I go through popping in 5 to 8 games to sample from my huge backlog, before finally settling on "the one".
And last night was such a night where I wound up cycling through a high number of games in my backlog until I finally settled on playing Aliens vs Predator.
But it pissed me off that I had to waste an hour just waiting while initial updates for Brink, Alpha Protocal, & A vs P(which had 2 updates) finished downloading.
Call me impatient because I am, but when I want to play…I want to play right frigging NOW, not later.
Last edited by BikerSaint on 10/4/2012 12:52:16 PM
I just don't stare at the screen, it seems that it takes longer.
A watched bot never boils, a watched screen never loads.
*pot 🙂
"but I honestly can't remember a title in the past few months that didn't require an install on my PS3."
I remember Darksiders 2 not needing a mandatory installation, or so my friend told me. I'm pretty sure what he told me is valid (he has no reason to lie haha).
The games I've been buying lately didn't require installs. Which happens to be Borderlands 2 and the polarizing RE6. In fact I can't renember the last game that required one. I personally think mandatory installs are beinng backed off a bit.
thats odd considering the last game i bought this year that had mandatory install was Yakuza dead souls.. its been awhile since Ive bought a new PS3 game that required you to install it.. even mass effect 3 didnt have one (which is funny since ME2 did).. i figured mandatory installs wer ea thing of the past now
ME3 does have a lot of lengthy loading screens though.
Yeah, a lot.
I much prefer to install the game and have to wait once, than have to wait every time I play the game.
Me too beam, you can always go back and delete that install if you need space, you can't get back that time spent loading.
Consoles want to act like daddy (the PC) then expect more features like this to be implemented in the future. Having been a PC gamer for a long time I've never had an issue with installing a game to the harddrive.
I've been installing games since I played my first PC game in '91. Doesn't bother me in the least either. What bothers me most nowadays, is the download/install speed of consoles. So friggin slow compared to their more mature siblings.
I hate buying a game only to put it in and have to wait 1-2 hours before i can play it. TNA Impact was HORRIBLE enough for me to never want to play it because it had to install somewhere around 5-6gb but took forever.
I understand maybe installing textures but 5gb? cmon.
You know what's badass…
Borderlands 2 not needing an install!!! And that game is the dog's b***ox!!!
Why would a game like Dishonored need that much of installation space? Please tell me it has nothing to do with Bethesda as a game company not knowing how to optimize the blu-ray or something. Does the X360 version need that much space for the installation too?
Dishonered is a Bethesda game right? If that's true then beware PS3 owners. We are second class citizens in Bethesda's eyes. We always get crapped on in some special way when they ship a PS3 game. Bethesda's games tend to run wonky on the PS3! This goes all the way back to Fallout series which runs like crap on the PS3! Skyrim was a little better but the PS3 version shipped broken with a long play game crippling bug. Beware.
I wonder if they will send Ben the 360 version like they did with Skyrim. Bethesda refused to send out the PS3 version of Skyrim to reviewers because they knew it had problems. Very sneaky of them!
Last edited by Excelsior1 on 10/4/2012 1:33:28 PM
I believe Bethesda isn't making this game, just publishing it.
It's an Arkane Studios game, a French dev of Bioshock 2, Deus Ex, and Half Life fame.
I'd say if you haven't upgraded your hard drive, you're missing out on one of the best abilities of the ps3. It's quick, it's easy, and it leaves you worry free.
They don't bother me nearly as much as they do some, but I've had to do a number of spring cleans on my hard drive over the past few years nonetheless. Still running my original 60GB drive probably accounts for some of that, but I have no real problem. Just delete the ones that you don't think you'll be playing for a while and keep the others.
i'm totally with you on this one b. all these install's are a major pain in the ass. especially for someone like me with a 40GB PS3. i constantly need to delete And reinstall games. i would upgrade but at this point i'd rather just save my money for a PS4.
I agree I am tired of all the game installs and updates that I have to go through to play a new game. They should all be optional.
Borderlands 2 doesn't require an install which is awesome!!! Nor does fifa. There are a few but they are just that few… and far between.
I don't have a problem with installs, I'd much rather have that than constant disc-reading when playing the game, which not only takes longer but also puts more strain on the disc-laser.
What bothers me a lot more is when you start up your new game and it forces you to download a big-a** patch, and not only do you for some reason get slower download speeds than I ever get on the PC, but the patches are sometimes huge, which makes you wonder how much unnecessary junk they put in these game patches, because a standard PC game update is rarely that big.
And if that wasn't enough, the PS3 makes you sit there and watch as it downloads since for some stupid reason you can't set it to download in the background while you do something else, SIGH.
There's a lot to like about the simplicity of the XMB, but there's just way too many things that are NOT done right, lacking a lot of really basic functionality and features, that any 10-year old Windows PC has, that could have, and should have easily been added…
I dont know why you are complaining… We all want newer games to be grander and better then the one before it and in order to do that the game have to be bigger in size in terms of gigabytes. Are you really that suprised that installs are getting bigger? Yes its getting frequent but to me the benefit outweighs the annoyance in the long run. As consumers we should never never expect everything to go our way. The reputable developers are the developers of the games and they do things for a reason even if its not to our liking… but who are we to think that we are entitled to every demands? Game companies can not cater to each individual.
Honestly, do you actually sit there and watch the status bar increases… There are many options with the PS3 to get patches to install while you are away. I have all patches install and downloaded in the middle of the night, or before i go to work i would install a brand new game if its a requirement.
I found that I'm a video game hoarder since i got my PSN+ membership. I would download games that I already have on disc (dont ask because i dont know why either) but I found that most of the games i downloaded I never tried playing. Since its free and already downloaded just delete it from you HDD. If you feel like playing you could just re-downloaded since it would still be free.
Last edited by kay Oss on 10/5/2012 10:44:48 AM
Hopefully mines never gets full. You are making me worried ben. You making me worry…
You shouldn't get so worried… chill out and enjoy your PS3 🙂
Q!
"play.experience.enjoy"
"One of the reasons I got away from PC gaming was because of all the extra sh** one has to go through just to play a game, and now a lot of it is showing up on consoles."
Oh, I think it's much worse on consoles. I never have any real trouble downloading anything on my PC. It's still a pain, but not anything like updates on the consoles. I bought the Sony 3D monitor today and a copy of Batman: Arkham City. It took forever to get that thing updated to play it. It gets to 30% then stops. Restart it. It gets to 21% and stops. I had to try about 5 times, and a half hour, just to get to play it. The most infuriating thing about this generation to me is buying a game on its launch day, taking it home and going through all of this. It's maddening.
Last edited by jugheadjones on 10/8/2012 3:16:31 AM