Console Un-Installs?

February 5th, 2008 · 2 Comments

So, by now you’ve heard the news that Devil May Cry 4 for the PS3 has a 20-ish minute install right off the bat after you’ve put the platter in the tray.

There’s a few schools of thought on this, from “wah, it’s no big deal,” to “you’d have to do this if it were a PC game,” to the standard console war fanboy debate of “just get it on the 360 and skip the install” (which I whole heartedly agree with if you’ve got both systems).

I don’t think the issue here is what people are reporting, and that’s how long the install time is. Fuck that. The real issue here is that there’s an install time, period.

I play both console and PC games, both with equal fervor and abandon, and I can accept both of their pros and cons. But when you basically have to say “wah, deal with it there’s an install time on our game” you fail as a console developer. People, that is to say the mass console market, play console games because they expect them to work like their DVD player or their VCR or their TV. You turn it on, pop in a title, and get to playing.

Not only are you fucking up the entire console development market by being too damn lazy to figure out a decent enough streaming solution off of that Blu-Ray disk, you are setting the most dangerous precedent of all: accepted console hard drive installs.

Oh, it’s only a couple of gig, you say (turns out it’s actually 5)? No big deal, right? What about those poor saps who bought a “meager” 20G HD PS3? What are they supposed to do once they hit their 4th game? They’re suddenly out of HD space and now have to start uninstalling PS3 titles from their console? The 4 title argument assumes they haven’t even begun to download any DLC content for the upcoming Home system, TV shows, music, or any PS3 “arcade” titles.

This isn’t a “next-gen feature,” nor should it be standard for next-gen gaming. It’s not anything anyone should need to “get used to.” It’s laziness, pure and simple, and if your game can’t spool off the disk without a 5G install, then maybe you shouldn’t have packed all that content on it in the first place. Honestly, Sony, how can you brag about Blu-Ray being a superior content format for gaming and let this kind of behavior fly on your system?

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Tags: business · general

2 responses so far ↓

1 Saxifridge // Feb 6, 2008 at 10:34 am

Agreed, I think install times on home consoles is just somewhere the industry really shouldn’t go.
2 Adam // Feb 7, 2008 at 11:24 am

I disagree. I despise load times and for a game which has as many as DMC4 I would gladly (and have) take an install to shorten them.

While I am not going to excuse the length of the install I am going to excuse the act of installation.

On the 20gb note: People who got the 20gb version are probably more in the casual side of things who don’t buy many games to begin with and would not miss one they haven’t touched in 4 months.

Resistance is the prime example of why Blu-Ray is the superior format.

Play Gears and then play resistance. Gameplay aside I have seen that same red couch lying EVERYWHERE in Gears where as there is a huuuuuge variety of vastly different locations in Resistance. That was the first game that I realized the value of up to 50 gb (18 in Resistance’s case)