With the announcement that the Playstation 3 version of Bioshock kicks off with a 5gb mandatory install, the question now has to be raised, Will these mandatory installs on the Playstation 3 become a problem?
First we have to ask the question, why do we need all these big mandatory installs on Playstation 3 games when the Xbox 360 does so well without them? That I believe is down to bluray, sure bluray has tons of capacity but the disc reads at an overall slower speed than DVD9, Therefore it is either have more load times in your games, or install data to your Hard Disk Drive to eliminate load times and make the game run more smoothly.
The problem is that if developers keep doing this then it is going to become a big problem maintaining all your space on the hard drive, 5 Gigabytes is a lot of space to take up for an install and if you buy many games that require this then it is all going to add up very quickly. It’s all fine and dandy that Playstation 3 allows you to use all kinds of external hard disk drives and to even replace the Playstation 3’s hard drive, but the point is that people shouldn’t have to do this. You have people who bought 20 gigabyte Xbox 360’s years ago and they still have no problem with space to this day. But if the install trend continues on Playstation 3, then I can tell you as a Playstation owner that I will not be happy.
However what I have noticed is that many first party games published by Sony find ways around the loading issue. For example when you first enter the game it may take around a minute or so to load at that point, but then the rest of the game runs smoothly with limited load times. So my thing is that, if Sony knows tricks to get around the loading issues then they need to share their information with developers, because these developers are not going to go out of their way to find a solution, they’ve created the game and they will implement it on the system any way that is convenient to them. So in this case it is up to Sony to solve this issue, as it is one that can hurt them in the long run.
Bourne Conspiracy Includes a Manadory Install on the Playstation 3
In conclusion I feel this loading issue could also be the cause of many Playstation 3 games being at 30fp and at low resolutions, and although mandatory installs can correct this issue, it is not a solution that can continue to be a growing trend if Sony wishes their platform to last ten years. If a game like Bourne Conspiracy can run on the Xbox 360 without an install then how does that look for Playstation 3? Some people may feel that Xbox 360 is pushing its limits with DVD9, but the fact is that they played it safe, DVD9 loads faster than bluray, but it just doesn’t have the same capacity. What we have to remember is in this day, No console is perfect and if you feel strongly about the negative aspects of your console then the only way to truly win is to own both consoles.
Happy Gaming, Peace.
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