With Devil May Cry 4's release nigh, players are now finding out about the 20- to 25-minute initial installation required on the PS3, compared to the instant playability available on the Xbox 360, and some concerns have emerged, with reactions being on both sides of the fence.
Some are saying waiting 25 minutes to only scratch 5GB of cache data to the PS3 hard drive seems excessively long, compared to read/write times on modern PCs where a single-sided DVD could be copied to a hard drive in just a few minutes or less. This could be because of the relatively slower speed of 2.5" hard drives like the ones used in the PS3 and laptops (5400RPMs versus the 7200RPMs or 10000RPMs of 3.5" desktop hard drives) combined with the also somewhat slower read time of the early Blu-Ray drives compared to well developed DVD-ROMs in modern PCs and the Xbox 360.
Others are concerned that this will become a prevalent trend designed for the betterment of the end user, but will end up eating up too much hard drive space to make owning more than a dozen games prohibitive. If DMC4 takes up 5GB, Oblivion uses 4GB, and Assassin's Creed takes another 1.5GB, that's over 25% of the hard drive gone already for the 40GB PS3, not to mention any demos, movies, or other content you may have downloaded. Of course, PS3 owners can upgrade to a bigger hard drive down the road. Also, some games offer installing to the hard drive as entirely optional, and not required for play, but this doesn't appear to be the case with DMC4, much like Assassin's Creed, which in my experience went straight into a lengthy "loading" screen the first time I booted it up, one I haven't seen since.
And yet other players worry that the huge initial time investment isn't worth the few seconds saved here and there on load times later. Twenty-five minutes doesn't seem like much unless you're sitting there watching the progress bar inch glacially across the screen. Capcom suggests alleviating this wait by "making a sandwich and drinking a soda." This used to be a joke made about loading games off of old 5.25" floppy disks. Planning to load a game? Go make lunch and come back when it's done! It's odd to me to see this same methodology used 20 years later.
Article comments
1 - Ken Edwards
I wish there was an option. There should be an option. I have played many other PS3 games where installing the cache files was an option.
Yep, I got the PS3 version, too. And from what I have read the load times are 3-10 seconds on the 360 and 1-2 seconds on the PS3 because of that 20+ minute initial install.
My problem is this: I play console games because I do not like PC games, and all the installing, patching, re-patching, re-installing that takes place on that platform.
I wonder how long the install process takes on the PC version of DMC4. I am sure someone will time that.
So what about the game? The game is very good. Thankfully they went back to the original to draw inspiration, because DMC2 and 3 were both letdowns.
2 - Bobo
This article is ridiculous. Installing to the hard drive is a huge bonus.
The reason the PS3 version of Oblivion was better was because it could install to the hard drive which meant their were no in game loading times. The exact same is true of Devil May Cry 4. IGN have timed the in game load times of the 360 and PS3 versions and according to them the PS3 version is up to 3 times faster and because of that they say the PS3 version is the better game overall.
Yes, you have to wait 20mins the first time you ever play the game but so what? You are getting the best version of the game.
3 - Dave
This has become a worrying trend, i have a 40gig PS3 and it's nearly full already.
I didn't plan to fill the HDD this early and certainly didn't expect it to be game cache taking up most of the space, i don't like to finish a game in one go then move on, i like to play games a bit at a time when i'm in the mood for a certain genre and those 1.5 to 5 gig installs mount up fast.
Sony please take note, when my HDD is full and there's no more demo's to delete i'm not going to be buying a bigger HDD, (I do enough of that on PC) I will just have to use my PS3 for movies only and switch all my gaming to Xbox.
I just read that Hot Shots Tennis will require a 5 gig install as well, i really don't understand the logic in this, is it lazy programming, a problem with Blu-Ray loading speed or do developers believe we want another PC in our living rooms?
4 - Mark Buckingham
@Bobo...the point of the article was to relay the reactions of other players so far and present the issue for discussion, as well as examine the ramifications and impact of this emerging habit of installing console games. I have a 60GB PS3 (wanted that backward compatibility) and am planning to eventually replace the HDD with the 120GB one from my laptop, so the drive space isn't as much of a concern for me, but others like Dave are going to run out of HDD space in no time, and developers need to consider this, as does Sony as they keep doing reconfigurations of the hardware specs.
@Dave...I think the main reason developers are doing this is because of the slow read speed on BD-ROMs, and to make load times optimal as a sort of console exclusive feature. It makes for a good bullet point on press releases and the back of the game's box, at least. To an extent, this is what Microsoft gets for not packing a hard drive in with every 360, but there's no reason they couldn't have still had it as an option for those with the right hardware.
5 - Ken Edwards
I have a 60 GB PS3, and I have already seen the warning message telling me I have only 500 MB left on it!
In a year? You have got to be out of your mind. It took me 2 yrs. plus to fill up the 20 GB on the 360, for which I switched it out for the price gouging 120 GB drive.
I have Yellow Dog Linux on my PS3, so there goes 10 GB right there. I too am going to install a 120 or 160 GB drive sometime in the future.
As far as all these games requiring a mandatory install, that is total hogwash. Make it an option.
@Bobo, I played quite a bit of Oblivion on PS3, and quite a bit more on 360. The change in loading times was not not much, if anything, on the PS3.
6 - Jason
You may want to update your PA reference given the following post by Tycho:
7 - Mark Buckingham
The specific PA post referenced still stands, as all they were saying at that point is that, when used effectively, using the HDD as a cache is beneficial to load times, though the new evidence you pointed out is also worth bringing to light.
In any case, I wonder just how many people bought multiple versions of this game just to prove a moot point. To all who did, you just made Capcom twice or three times as much money, and for what?