Fallout 3 just says no to mandatory install on PS3
by Jason Dobson 
{ May 28th 2008 at 2:25PM }
"The answer to that is no, there isn't," Bethesda marketing guru Pete Hines recently told Joystiq concerning Fallout 3 on the PS3. "That doesn't mean we don't use the hard drive, just that it does it in the background as opposed to a large, upfront install." As far as how much hard drive space the game will require, the exec wouldn't say exactly. Hines did mention that the RPG will require "a similar amount" of HD space as Oblivion, making us expect to fill up the PS3's juicy interior with about 4-5 gigs of atom-splitting data when the game ships this fall.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DeadPlasmaCell @ May 28th 2008 2:27PM
Nice
fwacce @ May 28th 2008 3:45PM
Of all the things to complain about, this whole issue is beyond absurd. I swear, the only people who complain about this are fanboys who don't even have a PS3 and are looking at anything to post on a forum board to make themselves feel better about their purchase, and that includes joystiq employees who like to stoke the flames. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG THE THE 360, OR THE WII OR THE PS3. You don't need to find something to complain about just because you don't have a certain system.
You have to wait a year for a game to be made, and you can't wait 20 minutes or less for it to install after you buy it? You have such an addiction to games that you have to be able to go from one game to another in the future with NO DELAY, instead of deleting a game and installing another if you are running out of hard drive space? Seriously? Who here actually wants to admit they have that serious of a gaming addiction that this actually, seriously bothers them.
I don't care if an install doesn't help load times at all. It's the way Sony designed their system to work with their BR drive. If you hate it that much, then sell the system, stop complaining and stick to playing physical cards where you determine the load times based on how fast you can shuffle.
/falls on deaf ears
Mullinsmcd @ May 28th 2008 4:06PM
Im glad you said it and you replied so close to the top. The main ppl who are making a big deal about the installs besides fanboys are the sensationalist gaming press (ie joystiq, kotaku, etc). Not one person I have met even considered it an issue when choosing a console to play a game on. PS3 has plenty of flaws ppl(like all of the consoles do). This is hardly one to be bringing to the forefront and making an issue out of.
marauder800 @ May 28th 2008 4:14PM
I disagree. I don't feel that disliking mandatory installs is absurd. The HDD is going to fill quickly as you build your library, and I don't want to uninstall games I own to make room for new ones. I don't know of a better way to speed load times, but at least give the consumer the option to game without installs. That way it wouldn't be so bad to uninstall seldom played games that you may want to just pick up and play once a month.
DeadPlasmaCell @ May 28th 2008 4:34PM
I don't know 100% of the facts on this, but it's just my opinion.. So far I'm not seeing any real advantage to mandatory installations. I mean It's one thing if there is a genuine advantage, like significant load time decreases or truly seamless game play. So far, it seems, the installs have been for little advantage. For people with a 20GB PS3 those installs can add up rather quickly. Sure it's easy to say "Just spend $50 or $60 on a 160gb HDD to replace your 20GB HDD" but that's just letting the companies off the hook. Same thing with the Wii, people are quick to say "Just buy a 2GB SD-Card and shut up" Well you shouldn't have to pick up their slack. For me it's not a big deal, It was easy to replace my 60GB HDD with a 160GB HDD, but I can see why people wouldn't want to do that or spend the $ to do it.
fwacce @ May 28th 2008 5:03PM
Look, there argument that you shouldn't HAVE to go out and spend more money on a console is legitimate, but no one is forcing you to do so. You were given the option of buying a 60GB/80GB version when you bought your 20GB/40GB model. The actual PS3 is the higher priced one, and Sony just offers the cheaper ones for people who would rather save some money at the loss of convenience. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but if this was such an issue, then you should have bought the higher priced full version to begin with. Otherwise, be happy you have an extra $100 in your pocket and just deal with trading out your games on your hard drive when necessary.
Sir Fidlious Wong (Justin T. McElroy Memorial Burn of the Day Award) @ May 28th 2008 5:28PM
Okay, I know I'm going to get hated for this but I must. Mandatory installs are unfortunately a necessary evil on the console. Are they necessary? For some games, yeah. But are they evil? Actually, yes. And it's beyond fucking ridiculous that such a discussion is taking place.
What we find is in most games, the install is more a byproduct of developers creating DVD disc images on the BluRay. BluRay doesn't read like DVDs, period. So when Lost Planet installs the entire of the game on my hard drive because they don't want to take the time to learn BluRay physical media like Naughty Dog (quick loading, beautiful, AND no install offered or otherwise), then I want the advantages of having the entire game dumped on my drive. I want to boot directly from XMB without the disc. If a game is largely streaming half the data and loading the other off the drive, I can understand. Like Ridge Racer 7 or MGS4. But if it's a disc image drop, I want it to launch just like my copies of Super Stardust, MKII, and Warhawk.
Now, claiming the bigger hard drive version is the "gamers version" is equally retarded. Because even if it IS a casual gamer buying that system with the 20GB hard drive, let's look at the games which will be bin material latter on. Largely the install versions. Now, do you think a casual gamer will know to go into the game data folder of the XMB and uninstall older games? These are the same people who looked at me with ignorant eyes asking how much "this here 8MB PS2 mem card'll stir" While Sony made it incredibly easy, keep in mind there are people who try to return wireless laptops when they find out you have to plug them in to charge the battery.
Mandatory installs suck. Period. Few developers take advantage of them and use it as a crutch rather than learning to deal with a new phsyical media. Casual gamers have neither the experience nor patience to deal with the bullshit that comes along with them. And we, as gamers, often do not game the benefits of them. Facing facts, if I could install my games just so I don't have to swap discs, I'd fucking love it. But I can't. So to me, it's a pain in the ass.
Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ May 28th 2008 2:28PM
JUST SAY NO, TO MANDATORY INSTALLS!!!
BananaBoat @ May 28th 2008 3:16PM
You know...the thing about mandatory installs....is that you can't say no?
I like where you are coming from though.
Sir Fidlious Wong (Justin T. McElroy Memorial Burn of the Day Award) @ May 28th 2008 2:30PM
Well, Bethesda was one of the few devs who took the time to make their PS3 port look better than the 360 version so let's hope they keep up their end of this quote.
Sir Fidlious Wong (Justin T. McElroy Memorial Burn of the Day Award) @ May 28th 2008 5:14PM
I got voted down for that? The fuck is wrong with you people?!?
Martez @ May 28th 2008 5:20PM
Wow, the fanboys are out in full force, I guess. Get a life, tools.
HighFiveJesus @ May 28th 2008 6:04PM
You were just telling the truth and i guess a lot of xbox fans didn't wanna hear it. its a fact though that oblivion looks and runs a notable portion better on ps3, so i don't think fallout will have much trouble being as good, or a little better than the 360 version.
pkpk523 @ May 28th 2008 7:03PM
Just curious as to whether or not someone could justify why they voted that comment down? I think it is kind of hard to argue that Oblivion was, indeed, better on the PS3, especially considering I have it on both PS3 and 360, and I have to tell you that it played much smoother and looked at least somewhat better on PS3. These forums are good when you have a point of view, and have something to support it. It falls into pointless, fanboy territory when you hate on a system/game/comment simply because it doesn't support your system rather than because you have an actual reason behind your logic.
CTC XBL-supapaypamawio PSN-ctclaw @ May 28th 2008 2:30PM
Hopefully this is true, I have a ton of games for my 360, and tons of DLC and I still have 10+gb free on my 20gb hard drive. My PS3 on the other hand has only 3 games yet only 30gb of space on the 40gb hard drive. I know I can upgrade the hard drive, but should I really have to pay more money to play the games I already own in a timely manner?
Patrick Carr @ May 28th 2008 2:31PM
Why don't one of you Joystiq writers actually get to the bottom of this?
Are these installs because the bluray drive can't transfer data fast enough? Is it because of the memory bottleneck?
What is up with this nonsense?
the way things are going you own 5 games and a 20 gig PS3 and you are out of hard drive space....ridiculous.
Poisoned Al @ May 28th 2008 3:01PM
The drives painfully are slow, and the system memory isn't huge ether, but it's mostly the Blu-Ray speed that's the problem.
That's what I read anyway. Take it for what it's worth.
BlaznGoldstein @ May 28th 2008 4:16PM
That's assuming there are more than 5 PS3 games you want to play...
(Disclaimer) I consider myself a neutral sarcastic entity that will dog anything to get a chuckle. Flamewars are stupid, go do some Jumping Jacks.
The Sound @ May 28th 2008 5:38PM
The Blu-ray drive reads slightly slower than the 360's DVD drive at certain points, but can spin as fast, or faster than the dvd drive. Blu-ray speeds are constant, while the DVD drive spins faster when reading the outer layer of the disc and slower reading closer to the center.
The problem is not that it's slower, is that it has to access a lot more data in that time. Blu-ray discs (25gb) is roughly 3 times bigger than a normal DVD9 drive.
It's like this (in a nut shell) you drop 2 quarters in random spots; 1 in an 8 foot X 8 foot square and the other in a 25 foot by 25 foot square, which quarter are you more likely to find first, and faster?
Some Devs (Naughty Dog for instance) duplicate some data across the disc, so it's easier accessed. Some games, like MGS4 will need one, just for the sake that it fills the entire 50gb disc, meaning there most likely isn't room to do that.
Well, at least that's how I've come to understand it. If I'm wrong, go ahead and correct me.
cc123 @ May 28th 2008 6:57PM
Joystiq ran this story in April:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/02/why-some-ps3-games-need-installations/
It linked to this story on MTV which has some answers to your questions:
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/01/the-mystery-behind-playstation-3s-sometimes-mandatory-installations-as-far-as-we-know/
Co @ May 28th 2008 7:07PM
This is where I like Nintendo. They don't jump out into the unproven/untested railroad tracks of splitting edge technology for this very reason. I've never been an early adopter. I didn't buy an HDTV until last October and it was a 32" at that. I still regret it since I can get a 47" 1080p today for like $200 more.
PS3 and 360 adopted early, and both have paid dearly this generation because of it both in repairs (360) and sales going elsewhere (PS3), mainly to the DS and Wii.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 28th 2008 8:16PM
It's primarily lazy developers. End of story.
I can play Burnout:Paradise without a mandatory install, and that game loads tons of data as you zip through town.
You have to take certain steps to make games work well off BluRay, just like you have to do so to make them work well off DVD. But developers do most of their development off HDD (because they don't want to press discs repeatedly) and at the end of development, one of the last steps is to take the time to organize the data on the disc so that the game works well off BluRay/DVD. Well, skipping that step is possible on PS3, thus shortening the development cycle at a phase when it is likely to be behind the curve already. And so developers take this easy way out.
Daniel @ May 28th 2008 2:34PM
Didn't the 360 have a lot of mandatory install games in it's first couple years? I could be way off base, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could have sworn I heard that.
CTC XBL-supapaypamawio PSN-ctclaw @ May 28th 2008 2:38PM
I think the only game that has required one on the 360 was for Burnout Paradise, and only so you could play online.
xFenixKnightx @ May 28th 2008 2:38PM
You might have, probably from here.
www.ps3fanboy.com
*cough* bullshit *cough*
Patrick Carr @ May 28th 2008 2:39PM
You never had to install game data before playing a game on the original xbox. The hdd was used, but installs before you could play were never part of the deal...and obviously nothing close to the 4-5 gigs that seem to come with most new PS3 games these days.
Dracard @ May 28th 2008 2:44PM
Incorrect. Microsoft themselves did not allow it, as it was done to ensure people with both core and premium models of the 360 could play them.
Daniel @ May 28th 2008 2:51PM
Thanks for setting things straight. I was misinformed.
Vidikron (FU) @ May 28th 2008 3:01PM
"You never had to install game data before playing a game on the original xbox. The hdd was used, but installs before you could play were never part of the deal..."
Not exactly true. Go play Doom 3. You get stuck watching some opening movie that you can't skip for several minutes because the game is caching to the hard drive. There's no way around it. That's exactly like an install. Here's the really annoying part... if you play the game sveral times in a row you can skip that part because the data is still cached. But if you play another game in between, the next time you come back to Doom 3 you get to sit through the caching process all over again.
Benny @ May 28th 2008 3:02PM
I guess that was sort of the upside of having the Core/Arcade model in the first place, despite the bitching.
The only game I know of that required a HDD is Football Manager.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 28th 2008 10:57PM
Yes, PGR3 and PGR4 install themselves when booted. It takes a lot less time so they hide it behind the boot screen.
PGR2 did it too. Try booting any of these 3 games after having booted 3-4 other games ahead of it (so the cache is cleared out) and then try to skip the intro movies. You can't do so until about 40 seconds in.
Admittedly, this isn't a huge imposition, and this is how games should be doing it on all platforms.
360 has a smarter way of giving developers ways to manage their HDD cache so that it doesn't actually take up additional space on the HDD. Basically, there is a small portion of the disc that is apportioned to the last 3 games booted. When you boot a 4th, it clears out the oldest one and puts its stuff there. This is why I said you have to boot a couple other games in between above.
So yeah, Xbox and 360 have had some mandatory installs. No, it hasn't been a huge issue. It's a bigger issue (but still overblown) on PS3 because developers are doing such big installs that they take a long time. Developers need to get wiser. I can play Burnout:Paradise and Uncharted without installing but not Hot Shots Golf?
Maverick Saturn @ May 28th 2008 2:34PM
OMGZORZ JUDGEMENT DAY HAS COME EARLY, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, A GAME WITHOUT INSTALL!!!!!
I'm joking of course, but it was beginning to seem like all games were taking the install option, even after I said it didn't bother me much, but it does when im running low on memory and its my favourite games i wanna install.
PojoMofo @ May 28th 2008 2:38PM
Why not just ask if you want to install data to reduce load times? Just ask it if no game data is detected on the HDD and dont ask if there is.
I guess I dont get why they cant. you either take a chunk of HDD space to reduce load times, or you read all info off the disk and have expanded load times. Why cant we choose?
PojoMofo @ May 28th 2008 2:38PM
Why not just ask if you want to install data to reduce load times? Just ask it if no game data is detected on the HDD and dont ask if there is.
I guess I dont get why they cant. you either take a chunk of HDD space to reduce load times, or you read all info off the disk and have expanded load times. Why cant we choose?
PojoMofo @ May 28th 2008 2:39PM
ok that is wierd
DangerMouse @ May 28th 2008 2:41PM
We'll see about that.
xFenixKnightx @ May 28th 2008 2:42PM
Bethesda FTMFW!!!
At the very least devs could make them optional.
born2kill @ May 28th 2008 2:43PM
Is he retarded? Thats still a mandantory install, its just not upfront about it. The reason PS3 owners are getting pissed, is not because theres the initial waiting period; its because its eating the crap out of our harddrive space. We dont want to have to buy and install bigger drives and this doesnt solve that problem.
ChronoZaga @ May 28th 2008 2:51PM
I really don't mind mandatory installs. I just go do something else. Nothing says that you have to stare at the screen and wait, and it keeps you from waiting in the middle of your game.
I mean, I'd love it if nothing ever had to load and I never had to wait, but if I do, I'd rather have it up front once.
ChronoZaga @ May 28th 2008 2:53PM
...But then, I had a spare 120GB SATA HDD sitting around that I put into my PS3, too. I guess that should be said.
PojoMofo @ May 28th 2008 2:58PM
I personally have no problem with it either, but I really just dont why we cant have optional installs.
ChronoZaga @ May 28th 2008 3:04PM
Yeah, I think you're right, PojoMofo. Maybe Bethesda has something here with it loading to the hard drive in game (hopefully in the background) and then loading from the hard drive from then on.
Chris @ May 28th 2008 2:55PM
@Sir Fidilious:
I doubt the PS3 version will "look better" since the 360 has been declared as the lead platform for Fallout 3.
cduran01 @ May 28th 2008 3:16PM
The 360 was lead system for Oblivion and look how it turned out on the PS3
xFenixKnightx @ May 28th 2008 3:26PM
"look how it turned out on PS3"
Oh yes it was mind numbingly better. *rolls eyes* Calm the fudge down fanboy. Can we just agree that the differences in this game and just about every other multiplat game will hardly be noticable already?
PojoMofo @ May 28th 2008 3:41PM
@Fenix
There is really no room for rational thinking here Fenix, we will forgive you this time, just dont let it happen again...
j/k but I certainly agree, as most do.
xFenixKnightx @ May 28th 2008 3:47PM
Sorry about that, I don't know what came over me. Back to reality...
Sooooo...higher resolution on Fallout3 for 360...TEH CONFIRMED?!!! ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!
Good times...
el serpiente @ May 28th 2008 3:49PM
I eagerly await the definitive GameTrailers video with the in-depth PS3 vs. PS3 comparison video, ultimately declaring xbox 360 da winnah!
cduran01 @ May 28th 2008 4:18PM
@Fenix
Dont understand that fanboy comment, what I was implying is that the 360 was the lead and yet the PS3 version still came out just as good if not a tiny bit better. This was in response to Chris' remark that implied that the PS3 version was going to look much worse just because the 360 was the lead platform.
Chris @ May 28th 2008 5:31PM
That's what I implied? I believe all I said was that the PS3 version would not be better, not that the 360 would be way better.
Sheesh, fanboy much? Because only a fanboy would take my comment so completely wrong and then get all butthurt over it.