Bethesda: Missing Skyrim PS3 DLC 'our problem'
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Company rep says lack of Elder Scrolls V add-on content for PlayStation 3 not Sony's fault; of performance, claims "for most folks, it'd be fine. For some, it wouldn't be."
The latest chapter in the ongoing saga over the missing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim downloadable content for PlayStation 3 has unfolded. Bethesda vice president of public relations and marketing Pete Hines wrote over Twitter that what's keeping the content from PS3 is not any fault of Sony's, but rather of the developer itself.
"We've never blamed anyone or anything," Hines said. "It's our problem, and it's on us to solve it."
Hines added that neither the vampire-themed Dawnguard expansion nor the home-building Hearthfire content is stable enough to release on PS3.
"The performance isn't good enough in all cases," he added. "For most folks, it'd be fine. For some, it wouldn't be."
In August, a Bethesda representative said potentially unsolvable issues may keep the Dawnguard expansion from ever releasing for PS3. For more on Skyrim's first two expansion packs, check out GameSpot's Dawnguard review and previous coverage of Hearthfire.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
385 comments
Just because they can't make the content work as DLC doesn't necessarily mean they can't make it work in a standalone GOTY/Complete edition that has all the post-release content embedded in the base game. And chances are that by the time it comes out, they'll have released the third $20 DLC, but the entire package would cost the standard $60. Meaning PS3 players might have to buy the base game again to get the new content, but it would cost the same as buying all three main DLCs upon release on PC or 360.
Of course that is all speculation. But it certainly seems to be the current pattern for games with heavy DLC support.
If the DLC is released I will be a very very happy man. I love the main game and have devoted the game A LOT of time so I'd love to be able to continue playing this game with some new content.
Bethesda broke my heart when they released heartfire on Xbox. I was on Bethesda website almost every day to see when dawguard will be available on ps3. Bethesda should just get it over with and break my heart completely so I Could heal faster, instead of torturing me and saying maybe we will release the dlc on ps3. Just Say No!!! and give me a reasonable answer of why not you freaking ahole.
?I have zero sympathy for anyone who plays an elder scrolls game on the console, unless their PC can't handle it. Many of the mods are better than the vanilla content.
Elder Scrolls Skyrim on the PS3 is bad stuff, loading times in which you can go out for dinner, frequent crashes, etc. But, since the game itself is freaking awesome, I decided to get it for PC also, and it's awesomely fast (+ mods)!!!
1 Like Rubbish! I've logged 270 hours on the PS3 version and since the updates I haven't crashed once.
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I remember when I saw the problems with the 1st NHL game by EA on PS3 and said no way I am buying the system. I am glad I didn't buy it then. Now we see this idiocy with DLC. LOL
It's the frikking firmwear you rubes (In case any of you rubes don't get it, I'm being sarcastic)
1 Like Scrolling down and skimming confirms what I expected...that the comments would quickly degenerate into a XBOX 360 vs PlayStation 3 vs PC thread.
Round one...fight!
3 Like Developers need to program specficly for the console or platform they want it on and stop porting, this is why there are problems to begin with
The over priced internet ready blu ray player just can't handle a big open world game like Skyrim and it's DLC. FACT! BANG! Man I love the Dawnguard DLC. It's awesome getting to be a vampire lord!!! Sucks to only own the over priced internet ready blu ray player.
The Xbox 360 is the BEST console EVER made. --John Carmack.
5 Like @buying1999 And I'm on a pc with mods and virtually unlimited player-made DLC and a heap load of awesome custom weapons. Umad?
5 Like @buying1999 Good to see you're over here too man, let me welcome you! Everyone welcome this dude, I'm mainly a PS3 player but he's hilarious.
3 Like What people fail to realize is that every object. EVERY OBJECT has to be accounted for. Every charector you've killed, has to be accounted for. Every mission you have done, not done, and branched out on, has to be accounted for. Just because Red Dead Redemption is a large game world in size DOES NOT mean it holds a candle to what Skyrim has to figure out every time you load your game up. You know how people may place items in their houses in Skyrim? Yeah, that has to be accounted for, recognized, stored, saved and reloaded not only every time you re enter, but that happens for EVERY store. Every NPC house. Every room and object in every castle. It's a LOT of data for the game to track and store. When you kick over a bucket by accident - the game has to remember this. That takes a lot of programming skills to be able to achieve not just once, but to bend those same coding and algorithms to meet standards for a different operation system, let alone two. (ports to 360 and ps3 respectively.) While it sucks that ps3 owners cannot get this right now. People need to understand that shit happens. It's life. You know when your at work dealing with some asshole who's complaining that his order/shipment hasn't come to your place for pickup yet? Yeah, I mean it's entirely out of your control that the weather got bad and UPS couldn't deliver on time PLUS your manager was sick yesterday and could not sign for your incoming shipment; and now its Saturday. Which means he won't be back in until Monday and that shipment won't get in till Monday night. And this asshole wants to scream in your face about it. I get it - he paid for his service of receiving a package, and we failed as a company to get it to him as promised. I would be disappointed at the situation at hand as well. But for christ's sake it was out of everyone's hands. I would say most people would agree that this guy needs to calm the fuck down and go home because he is acting like an asshole..... That's kind of how I view people who bash Bethesda right now. I don't care what their ambitions were. They had sought out to make additional content for YOU to enjoy, and unfortunately due to some unfourseen event, they cannot deliver that now because of coding/software issues that apparently cannot be solved at this time. And this is a product/service YOU DID NOT PAY FOR YET. People, please calm the fuck down and go home, your acting like an asshole.
@camyers1310 in many cases things just reset themselves, you kick a bucket over, next time it s in its previous spot, no, it s not as complicated as you make it seem, from your point of view, for a man to walk, the the right neurons has to secrete the right hormones for the right receptors that branches to the right muscles with the right amount of impulse duration, in the whatever and ever... game design has evolved, hardwares has become way powerful, to calculate way more situations at a given time, come on now, so this is all possible on an xbox but not on a ps3... i played it on xbox and pc, but it s really bullshit that they fucked it up at one point while coding for ps3 and they cant figure it out how they did it now...
1 Like @camyers1310 Didn't read your comment, just thought I'd remind you that there's a return key... makes it easier to you know, build thoughts and cogent statements rather than one long run on sentence...
1 Like @quantumtheo totally understand. for some reason i used the return AND the tab key and it STILL condensed it.... :/
@camyers1310 LOL, I understand, i read the end of your post and I agree, why are ppl bitching about a subpar DLC that they haven't even paid for... if they released it and ppl paid for something broken, yeah whine and moan all you want, but until then, STFU.
11 Like While I have a PS3 and like Sony, Skyrim is one of those games that is best experienced on PC anyway. Not just for the DLC, but for all the mods available.
1 Like Well, now you came clean, and I thank you for that. But I've already moved on. Actually, I gave up a few weeks ago. At least you guys tried, I just don't think I can trust you guys to put out supportable PS3 games. Until you guys show that you're capable of making a good PS3 port, then I won't be getting any of your games. On another note, HAH! Now you PC and Xbox players don't have shit to say about PS3 like "Oh, it's Sony's fault that DLC hasn't been released!" So HAH!
@sora123455 I think it is sooooo funny how people won't even buy Bethesda games period because they can't make a proper ps3 DLC. The game itself runs fine on ps3(not even close to the pc master race) But Guess what, who gives a shit that you aren't buying the games? they certainly don't. Its as if people take it personally that they can't do a finished product. Guess fucking what, you didn't pay for it, did you? So it's up to THEM to deliver the product for you to enjoy and spend your money on. It's funny for this reason too, it's as if these types of people think they're hurting these companies like they think of themselves on same level of Bethesda. Make a fucking game then come back to me.
3 Like Its alright Bethesda... You tried.. And honestly right now I'm moving on cause I don't give a damn already. I got other games I'm looking forward to like AC3 but if y'all wanna make it up.. On the next big title of yours I think we should get free DLC. I can forgive but never forget but I doubt everyone else feels the same.
2 Like @SiLenTWarrior29 Yeah, they totally owe you compensation for that thing you never spent any money on. /sarcasm
1 Like @DarkSaber2k So when you basically make broken promises to the other half of your fan base you just simply look the other way and say ?f**# it we tried? ...really!? They shouldn't had made it for the ps3 to begin with.. So what do the loyal fans of elder scrolls ps3 get for their patients? absolutely nothing? I ain't asking for much.. In fact I don't care but they will lose much respect after this so I think they should do at least something to save a little face. This whole situation was nothing but their fault to begin with.
1 Like at least they don't release and expect people to pay for broken content. Activision, EA, I'm looking at you.
9 Like You mean like they did with Skyrim, lol? Some gamers can't play once their save file is over 8MB. Trust me, if they didn't catch it from SOME in the gaming media about that, they'd release what they have now on the DLC front for ps3 all day!
6 Like Beacause they are the only ones releasing games that are that unbelievably HUGE & require lots of dedicated system RAM for games to be buggy, lol. PS3 doesn't even allow for that, as it's system memory is not a dedicated 512mb like 360, or minimum PC specs.
1 Like @spoonybard-hahs @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop That's true, why would you buy a game for a system from a company that has clearly shown preference to the rival?
@spoonybard-hahs @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop Not 100% accurate -- his tweet was made on July 12 (https://twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/228527108681502720), and Dawnguard was released on the X360 on June 26, and August 2 on PC, even farther than the 30-day exclusivity.
But yeah, he only said it because of people asking for it. I hate Hines, personally, for his lies and all that attitude, so I monitor his Twitter.
@Crash_WL @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop He said it the day Dawnguard was released.
http://suddenbrain.com/2012/07/bethesdas-pete-hines-says-not-so-fast-on-dawnguard-coming-to-ps3pc/
And as it turns out, he was actually commenting on people demanding information for - and making rumors that Bethesda had announced - Dawnguard for PS3. When in fact at that point, they never did.
@spoonybard-hahs @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop No, I mean, after the 30 days passed and it still was nowhere to be found, they said that thing. As if, "why are you panicking? We never said you'll get it".
@Crash_WL @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewopI alluded to that in my reply post. However, that is negated by the fact that afterwards Bethesda announced Dawnguard as a 30-day exclusive to the 360.
@spoonybard-hahs @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop I can help with your argument: I think Hines came out and said, a few weeks after Dawnguard was missing on the PS3, that the content was never announced for the console. There you have it.
1 Like @mostevilmuppet @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop
I can't find any proof for my argument beyond that this has happened before. Hell, the same thing even happened when someone from Bethesda said the DLC was never going anywhere outside of the 360 and then later admits to a deal with Microsoft. Microsoft has a Scrooge McDuck-like vault of money to throw at whatever they want. PS3 users didn't see any DLC for Fallout 3 for about a year after the 360 got it.
Aside form that, a developer that has been making games for a particular system suddenly cannot make content work for it? Even when they already gotten some of the resources via patches into the core game (1.7 added a a lot of tweaks needed for Dawnguard)? I will concede that maybe they just didn't put enough thought or effort into the PS3 port. Maybe. Then you have to decide which is worse: is Bethesda incompetent, lazy, or greedy?
And yes, I feel pretty shameful for not being able to cite anything to backup my argument. I do try to back up anything I say with citation. However, this time, it's hard not to read between the lines of what's going on.
1 Like @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop
I suggest you think about what you have written here.
Are you suggesting that more than 256MB of RAM is required by Skyrim for non-graphical aspects?
Further, from your usage of language, I suspect you're quoting figures you don't quite understand the relevance of.
@spoonybard-hahs @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop
Unless there's some evidence you can provide for this statement, please don't make it.
You've definitely hit the nail on the head regarding the RAM availability on the PS3 being (in total) basically the same as the XBox 360. That said, the PS3 has a hypervisor and OS resident at all times (the XBox 360 only has a hypervisor) and the PS3 only has 1/3 of the "conventional" processing power of the XBox 360.
The issue is almost certainly to do with the multiplatform approach Bethesda has taken here.
1 Like @twztid13 @shadowhunter0 @ydnarrewop The PS3 has 256MB XDR of main RAM, plus 256MB VRAM. Which yes, pales to current (and even past) PC minimum requirement specs,
The issue isn't the PS3, nor Bethesda's programming (although, the way the programmed the save system for PS3 Skyrim is a bit backwards and they limited the PC version to only using 2GB of system RAM). The issue is - as it's always been - that Bethesda got a shit ton of money from Microsoft to keep Skyrim's DLC exclusive to the 360 and PC. It's what happened with Oblivion, it's what happened with Fallout 3, and it's what happened to Skyrim.
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