I'm no program wizard, but my guess that the problem has to do with the how the PS3 handles ram / virtual memory / using a memory cache for swapping large amounts of world data.

As your save file increases with every quest you go on, with every chest you open (in certain places, I think the loot is randomly generated within certain parameters) and as you "discover" and move things around in the game world, your save file now has more things to keep track of, that are changed and discovered around the game world.

More things to keep track of include: pots and pans you've knocked over in a keep, loot you have stashed at home, bodies lying out in the wilderness, that dragon skeleton that keeps re-spawning and flopping around, dungeons you've cleared, people you've killed or befriended, your reputation in each town, goods bought and sold from vendors / merchants etc, each little thing altered and discovered make the file grow larger and larger and larger. And as you enter and re-enter areas, the system begins to struggle with available system resources to load the game world, to stream textures, and sound, and to keep track of things altered in your save file as well... and of course it begins to stutter and struggles to stream what its grabbing off the ram (or what it's grabbing off the cached memory on the harddrive).

Feel free to correct me if I'm getting the specifics of how virtual memory works, incorrect.
I'm no expert and everything I just could be 200% wrong

You've stated the exact same thing everybody else has

yeah man, this has been explained many times already... i think we all need to stop stressing out about this, and just wait till next monday and see if the patch clears things up

Yes, but that is all supposed to happen. What isn't supposed to happen is memory leaks, which is when the game caches something in the ram but then doesn't give the command to flush it once it's done(no pun lol), leaving the system with less and less ram as you play. That's is probably what's happening with the game, though my recent experience with this ame tells me thats not all that's wrong with it.

Wait till monday? lol. I bought an entire console to play a game that is broken. I will not be waiting till next monday. I was one of the users who assumed I did not have the issue.. till my game started slowing down as well.

The other two subforums for PC and Xbox have DIRECT and specific and official posts from Bethesda on their platform issues. The PS3 slowdown issue, from what I can gather here is being ignored. I've read something about a tweet about the issue being "improved" or "addressed" yet at the top of the official forum here, where all NEW players who just start experiencing this issue will mostly likely end up (after googling it), will just see a copy and pasted general post that's in the other subforums as well. Where is the PS3 specific messages and updates ?

not everyone's been scowering these forums for weeks or days or completely up-to-date on the issue. A simple clarification and update here on the official forums would clear things up, and stop redundant posts like mine. But until then, I'm going to keep doing so, because Where I bought my console from is now telling me they won't give a FULL refund unless the console is defective somehow, and opening it makes it "used". So I'm now stuck with a brand new PS3, and a game that doesn't work.

It would have helped if there was a big sticker on the PS3 version of Skyrim packaging telling me the game is broken and to wait a week or just buy an Xbox instead. THAT would have been nice.

So until details on whether this update fixes this specific issue FOR SURE, I will have to keep coming back here, and reading the same complaints over and over, and making the same complaints over and over.

I think that this game may use a bespoke page file "TYPE" system for this game in regards to on the fly game data as it cant be all in the RAM at once but can be drawn on when needed(maybe map sector), The game constantly writes and rewrites tiny amounts of data which it constantly using and changing to the harddrive. This degrades the fragmentation of the drive(they say it not the way the ps3 uses data but it might be the way the game uses data). In essence I think that bethesda have found a way to fragment the harddrive.

im in the same boat as u dude, thought the game was running fine... untill somewhere around 60hour 8.5mb..... iv been glued to these forums over the last couple of days waiting on some good news... at this point i think stop the stressing an djust wait till monday... we have no other options sadly..

That's the same conclusion I came to. The first PS3 (fat) HDDs use to have 2Mb of cache and the newers with 8Mb, so I thougth just upgrade the HHD. But now I'm wondering if the PS3 OS would be able to use the 32Mb cache of my upgraded HDD and also there is the limitation of 1.5 transfer speed/interface that's built in the hardware. I don't know if Sony could release some firmware to take advantage of an upgraded HDD.

Because let's face it Bethesda migth or migth not give a crap about it. But I wouldn't hold my breath and wait for the magic patch that has been promised since FO3 and later on FONV both with the very same issues and the very same response UPDATE... COMING SOON. And well I count myself among those still waiting for the almighty patch of all patches to fix what's unfixable.

That's just my opinion. By the way I swore to myself not to buy another Bethesda game ever... now I'm the proud? owner of 1 standard XBox360 copy, 1 standard copy for PS3 and the InFamous PS3 Collector's Edition. And all because that dang music, wich is awesome as the art in the game WHEN IT WORKS !