PS3 Hard Drive Speeds Genji Load Times

[Adam LaMosca]

PS3 Hard Drive Speeds Genji Load Times

Sony says a feature built into PS3 title Genji will dramatically reduce in-game load times via use of the console's hard drive.

PlayStation 3 launch title Genji will enable users to install 4 gigabytes of data to the console's hard drive in order to reduce in-game load times from about 15 seconds to only four seconds, says Sony. The optional procedure will be available via Genji's startup menu, according to an MTV News report. The installation will last about three minutes and will only need to be performed once.

All PS3 units come with a hard drive of either 20 or 60 gigabytes. Use of drive space to reduce in-game load times has been speculated as one likely use for the drive, although to date the functionality has not yet been confirmed as a feature employed by any other PS3 titles.

Source: MTV News [http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1543621/20061020/ludacris.jhtml#/news/articles/1543621/20061020/ludacris.jhtml]

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[Goofonian]

Anyone else think that a 4 gig install is a large chunk of a 20 gig (or even a 60 gig) drive?
My current (last?) gen game library is sitting at around 30 - 40 games and if games start taking up more and more space on harddrives, then there are going to be problems. A "once off" install can get really annoying if you have to reinstall it everytime you dust off a game from your pile that you've had to delete from the drive to save space. Thats not even mentioning space that will be taken up by any downloadable content that will go onto the drive, or custom soundtracks that get ripped to the drive.

Rather than being lazy and trying to tout this as a great thing to help reduce load times, why can't the developers actually find ways of reducing load times in the first place? 15 seconds is completely unacceptable in my mind. I've never noticed any really annoying load times on my gamecube, and that doesn't have a hard drive.

 

[Bongo Bill]

I guess real-time weapon changing would really drive up the load times.