Answer: Not at all true.

Franly, like I care about your CV ?

Tell me how long it takes on your computer to load DiRT ? Half Life 2 ? It's not instantly. Yet, you obviously have a strong config, and on those games, you can have a FULL install. You don't have full install on PS3 games.

Genji can be installed and in game, you still have some loading times. Short (normal ?) ones. But still.

" Not that I am defending any system, but would you be so kind to give us some examples, and if possible, for games that appear on both (or all three) platforms. I've been trying to find some "loading time" comparisons on the net, but to no avail!"

Don't have times, but have this :

"There are also some very lengthy and frequent load times in the game, and they're worse on the PlayStation 3 than in the other versions of the game. " coming from gamespot review of FN3 ( http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/sports/fightnightround3/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=tabs&tag=tabs%3Breviews&page=2 ).

"To top it all off, the PS3 version suffers from tediously long load times " coming from gamespot review of FEAR (http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/fear/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary%3Breview&page=2)

It's not on every games, but that's a common situation. Basically, it's because the X360 DVDx12 read faster (on the outer part of the DVD) than the PS3 BR.

The comparison
Mb = megabits
MB =megabytes

Blu-ray 1x: 36Mbps / 4.5MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

Blu-ray 2x: 72Mbp / 8MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

Blu-ray 3x: 108Mbps / 13.5MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

Blu-ray 4x: 144MBps / 18MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

At 2x Blu-ray can read as fast as 12x DVD's minimum read speed. At just
3x Blu-ray is comparable to DVD at 12x; through the first half of the
disc 3x Blu-ray is faster, through the second half of the disc 12x DVD
is faster.
And at only 4x Blu-ray manages to best a 12x DVD's maximum read speed
by 9%.

The PS3 has a 2x BR.

Just because the 360 doesn't have a hdd doesn't mean it needs loading times. Jak and Daxter on the ps2 anyone? The loading time depends on the game and there isn't really any way around that. In a stright up loading from optical media fight the 360 wins. There is some video out there of tony hawks project 8 loading between a 360 and a ps3 and the 360 clearly schools it. Motorstorms loading times are awful. I'm not a 360 fanboy, I love my PS3. I'm just being realistic.

ignoring this gen (because i know no one with a PS3 and haven't seen any games running on any 360s) the longest load times i have encountered have been games on the PS1, and i had timesplitters2 for my gamecube which was perfectly fast enough, with the exception of mapmaker; if i totally filled the memory bar up making a map then it would usually take about 20 secs to load when playing... but sometimes if i messed around with the tiles i think i managed to get a tiny bit more than the allowed memory, which sometimes meant it didn't load at all (left t for 10 mins and nothing happened) and occasionally i made a map that takes almost 5 minutes to load.

if i still have those maps on my memory card (unnoficial GC mem card might have been formatted) i might try them on the Wii and see if it can load the maps faster. (i doubt it but i may as well try)

For the Wii

Wii System (if you have the update) It's prompts you to press A after you press A it takes about 5-6 seconds to load the menu.

Disc Channel it takes about 10 seconds to load a Wii or GC disc.

Wii Shop Channel could take up to 30-45 seconds depending on your internet connection.

Zelda TP takes 2-3 seconds to load after you select your file.

Resdient Evil 4 Wii take 2 seconds after you select your file.

Warioware pretty much seemless due to gamplay style you will never know it's loading.

Rayman takes 1-2 seconds when going into a each mini-game.

Super Paper Mario 1-3 second load times but they have really long cut secnes so it most likely load during that.

Will update more later.....

Cryoakira said: ssj12 said: sure i dont.. im only formally cal-p in ut04 but no im not a pc gamer... idiot. if you have a computer properly speced for the game your trying to play then you wont have a problem. I have practically no load times. I'm running an QX6700 OCed to 5.2Ghz and Dual 8800Ultras. Load times for me are barely 4 seconds. Even starting Vista is a 10 second deal. Franly, like I care about your CV ? Tell me how long it takes on your computer to load DiRT ? Half Life 2 ? It's not instantly. Yet, you obviously have a strong config, and on those games, you can have a FULL install. You don't have full install on PS3 games. Genji can be installed and in game, you still have some loading times. Short (normal ?) ones. But still.   " Not that I am defending any system, but would you be so kind to give us some examples, and if possible, for games that appear on both (or all three) platforms. I've been trying to find some "loading time" comparisons on the net, but to no avail!" Don't have times, but have this : "There are also some very lengthy and frequent load times in the game, and they're worse on the PlayStation 3 than in the other versions of the game. " coming from gamespot review of FN3 ( http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/sports/fightnightround3/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=tabs&tag=tabs%3Breviews&page=2 ). "To top it all off, the PS3 version suffers from tediously long load times " coming from gamespot review of FEAR (http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/fear/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary%3Breview&page=2) It's not on every games, but that's a common situation. Basically, it's because the X360 DVDx12 read faster (on the outer part of the DVD) than the PS3 BR.   The comparison Mb = megabits MB =megabytes Blu-ray 1x: 36Mbps / 4.5MBps 12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps Blu-ray 2x: 72Mbp / 8MBps 12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps Blu-ray 3x: 108Mbps / 13.5MBps 12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps Blu-ray 4x: 144MBps / 18MBps 12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps A comparison of Blu-ray's read speed to a 12X DVD's maximum and minimum baseline. At 2x Blu-ray can read as fast as 12x DVD's minimum read speed. At just 3x Blu-ray is comparable to DVD at 12x; through the first half of the disc 3x Blu-ray is faster, through the second half of the disc 12x DVD is faster. And at only 4x Blu-ray manages to best a 12x DVD's maximum read speed by 9%. The PS3 has a 2x BR.

 Well im thinking about getting the orange box for the PS3 anyways. So ill tell you HL2 PS3 vs HL2 PC in the future.

Wtf! How much did that system cost, especially with the cooling I'm guessing you had to buy to run your processor at that kinda speed!

However there you didn't say anything about your HD, because load times aren't really affected by the Processor and GPU, it's more down to the read rate and speed of the HD, and I'm guessing it's probably better than the PS3's 5200 rpm HD, so that's not really much of a comparison, as your system is totally different, and has greater specs than any game needs. It would be better to compare a PC similar to the PS3, and see how quickly a game loads on that, and the PS3, if you're even gonna compare consoles and PCs.

Ok, lets share some theoretical knowledge then...

X360 has a 12X DVD drive which is about 16 MB/sec. But there are objections about it that its the "peak" rather than constant and would be on par with Bluray's 2X 9 MB/sec in real performance. According to what I have found on the net so far, X360 gets an average 12 MB/sec, which is about 1/3 faster than Bluray, but thats far from the end of story. This 12X mode is not sustianed on Dual Layer DVDs and but reduced to 8X, which is on par or slightly slower than Bluray, which is not good for X360 considering most games will appear on dual DVDs (?).

After reading "Oblivion" reviews all around, I come to the conclusion that PS3 loading times are much better than X360 but the creator Bethesda told that PS3 loading times were actually worse than X360 and they had to duplicate the data several times to reduce the loading times (which is the result that we care about), meaning even if PS3 may have a slower drive, the disadvantage could be eliminated by this technique. The superior aspects of the game is probably due to greater optimization, rather than hardware superiority though.

We cant decide for sure whether or not Xbox360 has a faster drive, even so, there are a few more complications.

- Duplication of data on vast Bluray capacity might help PS3 reduce loading times.
- Hard disc allocation or some sort of caching/installing will certainly help loading times decrease.
- Again thanks to much larger Bluray capacity, games will tend to have much larger data required to stream or load, which means longer load times, to which even Hard disc might not be sufficiently good.

I want to give an example regarding the last point. I have played many PC to N64 ports (such as Quake, Quake2, Daikatana, Fifa Series etc) and all of those games had much faster loads on N64! PC Versions all had previously fully installed themselves and using utiling the hard disc, but still N64 was faster in all of them. How come?

Because N64 games were most small, usually ranging between 8-16 MB, whereas PC games were at least 100 MB. Daikatana, especially, had lenghty loadings on PC but was quickly loaded on N64. Why? Of course the data size, which was hundreds of MB on PC but only 16 MB on N64. The Graphics differed a lot for sure, but the optimizations were also a big part of it. On PS3, many developers will not try too hard to downsize their data (especially graphics and textures) which will inevitably lenghten the loading times. This was usually the case with the PS1 and PS2.

Remember Crash Bandicoot Series during Naughty Era, they virtually had no loading, maybe only a couple of seconds! What about PS2 Crash Bandicoot loadings? Terrible! You know what I mean? Its not totally the machine's fault, which can create miracles at right hands, but the important point is what we get eventually, right? (not what we may potentially get). And many developers tend to abuse this extra capacity rather than optimize it.

Note on "Resistance". Insomniac games are a Playstation expert team. Their games traditionally hardly ever had any loadings (Remember Spyro series on PS1). The same goes for Naughty Dog, both are 2nd party developers (or should I say 1st party?). If only all teams were all that talented, and kudos to Bethesda for this aspect!

I have very rarely if ever seen a screen that says "Loading..." during a Nintendo first-party game on an Nintendo console. When I try out PSP/PS3/Xbox etc. the first thing I notice is the ten-second load times for a small level.

 I'm amazed people can stand waiting that long - I want to say "You know, Nintendo games don't have any significant load times"...

That Tony Hawk Load time video honestly was bogus. They did a very shitty job porting it and it lags pretty much everywhere in the game. Poor example.

I'd like to see comparison video for The Darkness or something newer.

Also for your info the duplication of data does nothing for the actual load itself. Its for seek-times. Blu-ray has a disadvantage when it comes to DVD when it comes to seek times. Duplicating the data allows for the laser to find the data faster since Oblivion is so random because one minute your in Anvil, the next in some dungeon.

All 360 games are on DVD-9 I believe. Something to do with a DRM security section on each layer of the media. This also limits each layer to like 3.5GB of data so really developers need both layers anyway. This also means that data is mostly coming from the outer 75% or so of the disk.

Either way DVD-9 drops to 8x when read which has an average that is slower than the 2x Blu-ray drive. But its still very close to the same speed since it omits the slowest 25% of the disk so the average is increased. So more or less they are pretty much equal in that effect.

One advantage of Blu-ray is its constant read speed which does help significantly when it comes to streaming data. Hopefully third party developers start taking advantage of this like first party games are showing such as uncharted & Lair.

Another advantage would most likely be compression like the man above said. Since cell is such a powerful CPU its ability to handle compressed data should be excellent.