When I reviewed Skyrim on PS3, I quit before I came across the infamous, still not entirely fixed “chug bug”. Once your save file gets past 6MB, the frame rate drops like a rock. Bethesda has essentially spent the ensuing months trying to fix this problem with little to no actual success. Their reaction has been, well, see image at right.
Admittedly, this is kind of staggering. Bethesda is not some fly-by-night F2P crap factory. They’re one of the most respected developers and publishers in the entire freaking industry. In theory, this is not a problem they should be having.
Now they’ve pretty much just admitted that they suck.
Here’s what they had to say about Dawnguard coming to PS3:
We have tried a number of things, but none of them solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone… This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.
To translate:
We essentially aren’t able to write code for a console that’s been out for six years because it’s not a PC and apparently we’re completely unable to fix even basic problems.
I don’t think it’s a huge outrage, really, but it is kind of ridiculous. If the PS3 were a new system, one which hadn’t had many open world games pulled off on it, this would be reasonable.
But it’s not. If I can buy, play through, and thoroughly enjoy Dragon’s Dogma and have to buy Skyrim all over again on PC just to play the goddamn thing for a point of comparison, something is broken here.
And it ain’t the PS3.