I am not the first, and I am sure I won't be the last, to be completely amazed at how awful production ownership has been handled. Let me be clear, before I continue. I have been an avid supporter of Bethesda since day one. Your company has made a legendary legacy from the Elder Scrolls Saga. After a very long (5 Years) anticipated release of your newest addition, Skyrim, I am baffled.

I myself, have been to game design school and am aware that there are always unforeseeable problems that arise on a game's release. So I am not surprised to hear and experience these problems first hand, especially with a game as large as an elder scroll game. What truly baffles me, is how Bethesda and the Game Designers have stated they knew that there was a problem, pre-release with an incompetent game engine, that is unable to sustain long periods of gameplay across all platforms.

Sawyer states: "It's an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored off as bit flag differences compared to the placed instances in the main .esm + DLC .esms,"
said lead designer and project director of Fallout: New Vegas, Joshua E Sawyer of Obsidian Entertainment. (New Vegas used an early iteration of Skyrim's game engine.)

Josh also goes on to state: "The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory," Sawyer explained. "The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It's the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of."

This would seem like a valid reason for the issues that the PS3 is experiencing with the game, less RAM = "System has to work harder to keep up". Josh states that the PS3 has a divided memory pool, but he does not say why, but I will.

I will explain very simply, for those that don't need the technical perspective. The PS3 has the most powerful processor on the market, for consoles. It uses a multi-threaded processor, which is more advanced than Xbox or Wii. While the multi-threaded processor is more powerful, but it also means programers have to code, on a multi-threaded scale. In essence, this means more work for programers, which they don't have to deal with on Xbox or the Wii. When Sony unveiled the PS3, it was a trophy console, and it out-shined the Microsoft and Nintendo consoles in every way. Unlike their competitors, Sony cut no corners in making their console, they put everything they could into their system to make it the best possible. Sadly, because the system was so advanced, it suffered for it. And lost many Game publishers that where exclusively with Sony as you saw on the PS and PS2. (Notice when PS3 was released and even now, how many more games you see for Xbox and Wii) Thus began the Game Publisher grudge against Sony.

The above are not speculations, they are facts, and I encourage any and all to look them up for yourself.

Skyrim is powered by Bethesda's own Creation Engine which is the company's new engine.And have publicly stated that they plan to use this engine in at least one other project, besides Skyrim.

Buyer Beware?!

Or is it safe to say that as long as we get an Xbox, that we will be fine?

Even IGN is amazed at how bad this highly anticipated game is doing: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1214016p1.html

And even though professionals like Digital Foundry have tested the game for themselves: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag

"These prolonged bouts of stuttering render the game almost completely unplayable, even during non-intensive walks down pathways, with some freezes lasting long enough to drag the frame-rate down to zero in places - the first time we've seen this in years of performance anolysis here at Digital Foundry. So has the new patch improved performance? Yes, it has benefited, with the aforementioned 20FPS baseline being raised to something closer to 25 on average. However, the root cause of the stuttering - whatever it may be - is still there and the potential for zero frame refreshes per second is still a possibility, leading to some very unwieldy controller response and an extremely poor gameplay experience in general. To all intents and purposes, this updated version of Skyrim on PS3 is still unplayable for those with a huge time investment in the game - unless you're only willing to play Skyrim in half-hour bursts, saving and restarting the game. Hardly ideal." -Says Tom Morgan (Digital Foundry Representative)

And yet Bethesda refuses to believe that the way the game engine saves data, is not sloppy and is not a good source of this lag and drop of frame rate?

Instead Bethesda, you make public comments downplaying the severity of the issue and promise to address the issue as soon as possible. If that is the case why are you releasing patches, that are for general post-release, and not for the problems everyone is talking about all over the internet?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/327827/features/skyrim-ps3-patch-helps-but-doesnt-fix-lag-issue/

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/28959862/ign-calls-bethesda-out-skyrim-lag-how-the-hell-did-this-happen?page=2

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-brief/59703-skyrim-lag-frustrates-ps3-players

Is it not bad enough, that if you type in "Lag in a PS3 game" that Skyrim appears at the top of the list in google?


Quite frankly, you need to stop downplaying the issue, and you need to start addressing it. Brand Loyalty is a major part of sales, and not to mention, even IGN and Tim Clark is saying you will not get GOTY (Game of The Year) unless you take responsibility, and do everything in your power to fix the issues, not later, but now. And I agree with both Sentiments.

I think it's Bethseda's fault. If you can run a graphic intensive game like Uncharted 3 with so many things going on at the same time. Why can't you hunt in the woods simply then have crazy frame rate. I really don't know about Bethseda on this one. Both consoles have 512mb. The only difference is that the PS3 splits up the memory 256mb for the system and 256mb for the video. Xbox just uses 512mb for everything. It might level out the playing field if Bethseda might've used the CellBE so the graphics chip can do other caulculations like framerate.

Bethesda's fault? You better believe it. Way over hyped and hardly a tested game.

Bethesda's fault of course, how come the only game running of this engine that ran perfectly on the PS3, was ported by another company?
It is not the engines fault, Oblivion already proved that the engine runs fine in the PS3, that company knew how to take advantage of the PS3's processors and what not.
But as soon as Bethesda starts porting its own games, you notice bloated save files, and generally unplayable framerate. Also the games remain unpatched.
So this had nothing to do with the engine, but simply lazy programers.

"If you can run a graphic intensive game like Uncharted 3 with so many things going on at the same time."

To be fair that's a bad example. It's not open world and it most likely had more support from Sony since it's a platform specific game. You also have to consider that Uncharted does not save everything you do whereas Skyrim records all your actions that affect the world.

If PS3 can run Fallout 3 & NV + Oblivion with no lag

Then Skyrim should have no issues.

I agree 100% I've also been saying the same thing all over these boards that there engine simply is not coded properly for the PS3 and honestly never will..just look at New Vegas they never fixed it and after I played all the DLC the game broke I got stuck in the strip in front of lucky 38 forever 0 FPS and crash every time. So we can hope wish like to think they will fix the issue. But when its a core problem in your engine its self....how do they now go back to fix it...They knew fully well the game was a broken mess its impossible for them to not have known....should of known when not a single company could review it for the ps3 till after release...Shows they don't care about there customers and should considering there sales volume for most multi-platform titles these days sell just about equally...

Except for Mortal Kombat one game it was a difference in sales...everyone wanted Kratos I guess and only time I didn't feel like Xbox got the better end of the deal. But I digress Its just sad but these days the only games I expect to run smooth and look great are PS3 exclusives if its Multi I some what expect it to be inferior to Xbox due to what seems like industry practice towards PS3 not getting proper treatment and just being ported cuz they don't want to code for it

Umm did you play New Vegas for the PS3 lag was not the word for it game breaking to unplayable degree hmm skyrim same thing same exact engine just tweaked ohh I wonder why...and Oblivion was the only game that wasn't done by them left it up to another company to port it and was a different game engine I believe. FO3 spotty but nothing like New Vegas

So basically, they were too lazy to be bothered to have some programmers fix it to be a good game and just [censored] out a crappy port.

It makes me sad. Very sad.
I guess the PS3 is a victim of its own success.
~

Why are Bethesda so lazy? They could have Skyrim amazing-er!

They took so long to bring this game out, so most fans thought they would have sorted the bugs. That's okay, that's what you'd expect would happen. No, they haven't sorted anytrhing out. Expect to buy this gane as a 'Game of the year edition'. Then you 'might" be alright unless you have to turn your ps3 into a german one just so you can get past the night grass [censored] thing with the vampire cure. I hated turning my ps3s language into german just because of the bloodgrass problem.

Bloodgrass problem?

nice post it sounds like this game is not fixable....great

Not sure how everyone else is fairing with their own current gameplay, but I have been noticing the larger the save file grows, the slower the Frame Rate. I am currently at 16MB and cannot play longer than 30 minutes or my FPS will drop to Zero and my Playstation will freeze, forcing a hard reboot. Keep in mind I just bought a new PS3 less than 2 months ago. I know for a fact that the "Lag" is tied directly to your save file. The bigger the size of the save file, the heavier the weight the game has to carry. If they properly coded for the PS3 with the Creation Engine this would not even be an issue.