MTV teams up with Mega Man to compare console download speeds

Shame about that dpad huh.

Straight out of the box the Xbox seemed to be faster than Wii and PS3. But once I DMZ'd them all, the PS3 got A LOT faster. But I use wired for all except the Wii, so I can't draw a good conclusion for the Wii's speed.


Now as to which I prefer, the PS3 wins out. The D-pad is on par with the Wii, but there's one key difference... I can download it again on whatever PS3 I want. I go visit a friend and think "hey, let's play some mega man" and a minute later we're playing my purchased copy on his PS3. And I hate the Wii's storage woes.

Lars I too can download any 360 Live Arcade game I want at a friend's house.in minutes. I have my Live profile on a memory card.

oh no's the sony fangirls down voted me, what will do now

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE:

"We downloaded different things and we have no idea what we're talking about!"

The Wii has wired. You need a lan adapter, but it's only a fraction of the price of the 360's wireless adapter.

Wow, its amazing how some gamers don't know basic facts like you can buy an official Nintendo lan adaptor for a wired internet connection on the Wii. Is the Wii really so shunned by hardcore gamers that this basic knowledge is beyond them?

^ I haven't used the wii since last...March (when did wii mario kart come out)? And I rarely ever take it online for anything. So I stand corrected. ^_^

@ Foetoid

"Is the Wii really so shunned by hardcore gamers that this basic knowledge is beyond them?

If your saying hardcore, um yes. I speak for my self, but when we go into any gaming retailer, the Wii selection is laughable at best. "Party this, horsey that"... Its a shame. Yes, it has great titles but overall "hardcore" and Wii don't really sound right in the same sentence. Unless one gets technical and uses hardcore in terms of old 8-16bit games bought and played on the game channel.

each console has the same internet connection options. PS3 is just the only one that comes with wireless and wired built in, but you can get adapters for Wii (for wired) and for 360 (for wireless).

this test seems to be all over the place and doesnt seem to be a good indication of what's going on (especially with the file size differences). i know for me, my 360 is the slowest. then my Wii and then the PS3 is the fastest. its probably something to do with my connection and router set up though because the general consensus of everybody else seems to be the exact opposite. either way, none of them download unreasonably slow.

Exactly. Of course the 360 won with wired, if they were comparing it to the PS3's wireless. Unless the last paragraph of the post is just badly written.

my wireless speed is 54 Mbps. That is much faster than any internet speed. It should not make any difference in download speed, i believe.

It's not that simple, Gun Barrier.

That's the maximum potential, true, but it's completely unrealistic. Wireless is much more prone to signal degradation problems and collisions. There's no way you'll ever come close to attaining the same speed as a wired connection, short of creating an RF filter around your game room perhaps.

@ Lord Negatron:

What are you 12?

What the hell, the wii doesn't have wired net by default? How gay is that!

it has wired, get ur facts

The quote from the SOURCE:

"The PS3 is the console that won most of these races. So that’s the headline for now: PS3 Downloads Games Fastest Over Wi-Fi"

Also the link at the bottom labeled "Source".

my guess is that the Wii version is actually an NES file whereas the Xbox and PS3 have bloated software code needed to play the game.

That's a fantastic theory, but I'd be more willing to believe that, on the Wii, the music is being procedurally generated, as opposed to MP3/AAC files on the other two platforms.

If it were a true NES file, it'd be in the kilobytes. Despite the look, they probably still used modern developer tools and coding to get that size.
I want to say the size difference is due to HD, but are HD Megaman sprites really that big?

"I want to say the size difference is due to HD"

Yeah but no. The graphics are the exact same.

"That's a fantastic theory, but I'd be more willing to believe that, on the Wii, the music is being procedurally generated, as opposed to MP3/AAC files on the other two platforms."


Doesn't sound very plausible to me. The music is the exact same. The only reason I could see would be if they were unable to port their music generation code to the other two platforms, but even that is very far fetched.

No, you see on VC games the game is bundled with the emulator itself each time. It's not effecient but that's how it is. And why 15 VC games can fill my 512mb internal memory.

I'd love to know why the game is smaller. The only thing I can think of it is the music, being rendered in real time on the Wii and being a compressed format for the 360/PS3.
Speak up Capcom.

I believe it's that Wii is able to render MIDI in its basic form, while PS360 needed actual music files

Eh they could have just used reference instruments (see Duke Nukem PSP) which are only 30mb.

@Lee Except Mega Man 9 isn't an emulated game on the Virtual Console.

"I believe it's that Wii is able to render MIDI in its basic form, while PS360 needed actual music files"


I don't know if I should listen to someone who calls anything on a console "midi". ;) Either way, even if it did use something Wii-hardware-specific (which would be pretty stupid), all those old games you've ever seen ported to any console all use a software-only music engine anyway, which is completely platform-agnostic. If the music is indeed the reason for the ridiculous filesize increase, then it's just lazy fucking coding. Just more proof that all that storage space for so called "next-gen content" really only exists to facilitate someone's bloated bullshit.

Joystiq are in a current phase of PS3 bashing. They can't bring themselves to say anything good about it.

There is currently something good about it?

Deanb is right

Joystiq unfortunately leans more towards ps3 bashing; they tend to make any article about comparing connection speeds or inside jokes about storage space (mgs4) into some sort of PS3 bash feast. :(

Does it really matter about the download speed since at the end of the day, you will be playin MM9 on whatever console you bought it on ? It doesn't affect gameplay.

I was going to say the same thing, but I see the PS3 fanbois have already voted you down.

That's like saying "What about the week it takes to come out on the free xbl service?". It has nothing to do with download speed and is irrelevant even in a test that was as poorly conducted as this one.

Now that I found the source link (ha, forgot joystiq also links the pictures to it) it looks like they took install time into account for the PS3 version. When not downloading in the background (foreground downloading? just "downloading"?), it installs things automatically, which must be what they did.

So, yes, even /with/ the install time the PS3 was the fastest. That doesn't increase the quality of the test though. There really isn't an indication if they were timing and doing the size/time to get the download speed or checking it on a network device in the line.

trev-
since when did the ps3 allow us to download a file and install a file at the same time??
most to all of ps3 installs are not background allowed, thus any background downloading stops at that moment, i think....

so u do have to take install times into account. as the install takes some time in itself.
if i download megaman 9 on xbox live and psn i would be playing it faster on the xbox live service, mainly due to the loss of install time.

if its possible i did not know this....
fill me in if im wrong people....

Reading is your friend, sk8. The PS3 will install things automatically if they're NOT downloaded in the background. Try it with something quick like a LBP costume. It downloads and installs straight away but only if you don't hit download in background.

And they DID take install time into account in their tests. PS3 was still faster. To quote the article, linked to through clicking on the picture here on joystiq.

Stephen's first times/speeds:
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded and installed on PS3: 142 seconds
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded on Xbox 360: 345 seconds

-Mega Man 9 download speed on PS3: .79 MB per second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on Xbox 360: .86 MB per second

Stephen's second speeds (didn't include times):
-Mega Man 9 download speed on PS3: .55 MB per second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on Xbox 360: .31 MB per second

Patrick's times/speeds:
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded and installed on PS3: 80 seconds
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded on Xbox 360: 104 second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on PS3: .79 MB per second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on Xbox 360: .86 MB per second

Tracey's times/speeds:
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded and installed on PS3: 106 seconds
-Mega Man 9 demo downloaded on Xbox 360: 194 second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on PS3: .59 MB per second
-Mega Man 9 download speed on Xbox 360: .46 MB per second

Stephen also downloaded three other games, one on each system:
-Everyday Shooter game download speed on PS3: .67 MB per second
-Braid game download speed on Xbox 360: .61 MB per second
-World of Goo game download speed on Wii: .55 MB per second

You would be playing faster on PS3, even with the install time.

It makes sense that the Wii version is 10 times smaller because, y'know, the Wii has no storage space.

Good point, same with system updates it doesn't really matter which is fastest except from an analytical point of view. In the end, we are all doing the same thing, whether, watching a movie, playing games, music etc.