For some of us, the PC is our platform of choice.
PlayStation has value due to platform exclusives.
If Sony decides to publish their games on PC as well as on PS, I will likely never buy another console ever again.
Simple as that.
As for the rest, (ease of use, controllers, TVs, couches and other arguments as old as the internet itself), to each their own I guess.
Personally, I'm not worried.
And that's the thing, looking back at the PS2 (6th gen), there where way more exclusives to be had just for that console. Nowadays theres not that much of exclusives anymore, and the focus of porting them doesnt help either.
So yeah, I think @DSoup is correct: if you regularly use your PC, the update process is pretty much invisible; if there are chunks of non-use, the update process seems to be more PS3-like
I wanted to address this here; the converse is also precisely true and yet far worse in my particular experience. I don't play my XBOX every day, or even every week, or honestly every month. Invariably, when I power it on, I have to wait some non-trivial number of minutes for the XBOX to pull down its own updates, and then most lilely the updates to my three total XBOX games (so there's a roughly 1 in 3 chance my intended game has to update before I can be allowed to play) before I can do anything.
Here's the crux: on my PC, the various updates go at warp-freakin-speed because of my fat fiberoptic gig pipe straight into my home network. A 2Gbyte update on Steam? It's done in about thirty seconds of combined download + apply, on my crap old rig with a SATA-interface Sammy Evo 850 drive.
That same fat gig pipe also feeds my wired-connection XBOX, yet apparently it can't be arsed to go much faster than about bonded dialup or something. Once that 2Gbyte update starts on XBOX? Hell, I might as well walk out of my media room to the end of the hallway, down the 16 steps to the first floor, walk through the entryway, the formal dining room, into the billiard room to grab a bottle of bourbon from the fancy liquor cabinet, then down the short hallway to the kitchen to fetch a highball glass, a cube of filtered ice, pour myself three fingers of double-oaked goodness, then traipse back to the billiard room to replace the bottle, then back to the stairs, down the hallway, and back to the couch so now I have something cold to drink while I wait another fifteen damned minutes for it to effing finish.
Not that I'm bitter, but updates on consoles suck far worse than on PC IMO.
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I don't have a Series X, I have a One X. That might be why? I dunno.
It sucks, that's the actual point. Maybe comparing "old" versions of both PCs and Consoles leaves a bad taste for those whose only experience was the "old" way?
Wanna know something really stupid? If the only reason I powered on the XBOX was to play a BluRay disk? I still have to wait for the stupid OS update. I don't give even a single flying F about the insipid OS update if all I want to do is play a BR disk, and yet here I am waiting another fifteen minutes.
At least Windows OS updates run in the background.
Fair enough I suppose.. I haven't changed literally anything in the defaults except the audio output configuration and to move my games installation default storage device to the external Samsung USB 3.1 SSD drive I bought. I'll go looking to see if I can find whatever power setting permits it to wake up and do patching "out of band" as that would absolutely improve my experience for sure
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Deleted member 86764
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Just to give a converse experience. After all of yesterday's excitement with Metro Exodus, last night I ordered a copy on the PS app on my phone while boozing and didn't think anything else of it.
Woke up this morning before the 2yo was awake, so went to the PS5 and the game was just immediately available. I never noticed the PS5 visibly turn on or do anything. The game was just there.
If it ever needs to update a game when I've got it turned on, the update can happen while I play the same game. I don't need to wait for the download to occur. I guess that's a difference between Xbox and PlayStation?
Woke up this morning before the 2yo was awake, so went to the PS5 and the game was just immediately available. I never noticed the PS5 visibly turn on or do anything. The game was just there.
If it ever needs to update a game when I've got it turned on, the update can happen while I play the same game. I don't need to wait for the download to occur. I guess that's a difference between Xbox and PlayStation?
It’s the same except when it comes to specific online games that will only trigger updates on login. But otherwise it will download any game with the patches already in there
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Deleted member 11852
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I've only had my Series X a few weeks so I don't have much experience living with it over time, but my PS5, PS4 Pro and PS4, all have a low-power sleep setting where updates - both games and firmware - just download automatically.
Games will update automatically unless there is an update for a game you were playing when it went to sleep, in which case you'll get notified there is an update ready the next time you turn on the console. It's generally only online/competetive games that make a fuss if you're trying to use an old version, they'll force you to update before they'll let you reconnect to their severs but everything else you can update when you are good and ready.
The same is true with OS updates, if you have not set it to auto-install them you get notified of an update when you next use the console. It does not make you update, you can defer it for weeks if you like but online games generally demand the latest firmware.
This may be an Xbox thing, or just a last gen Xbox thing. The PlayStaton 4 and 5 are really flexible about OS and game updates. A PS5 firmware update takes around 40 seconds start-to-finish, i.e. trigger it and being back to the menu screen. PS4 was a little longer but not by much.
Tkumpathenurple
Veteran
So... Starfield eh?
What do people want from it?
A Skyrim world with Mass Effect powers is pretty much all I want from it. Anything else is a bonus.
What do people want from it?
A Skyrim world with Mass Effect powers is pretty much all I want from it. Anything else is a bonus.
The only difference I noticed between game and app updates is the PlayStation has 2 explicit steps where you wait for the patch to download and then have to wait for it to update. On Xbox its one single step of download with update, so when it's done downloading the title is fully patched, no additional step to wait for.
For OS Updates on Xbox, it has 3 steps, download, verification (takes a long time with puny Jaguar Cores on last-gen systems), and then apply the updates. The apply the updates may sometimes blank the screen during the process like a Windows OS Update does and then it does a reboot. I watched the Series X do a full firmware and dashboard update in under 40 seconds. The Xbox One would take several minutes into the tens of minute range.
I've only ever seen the OS updates happen during the first week I had the console and explicitly triggered them, first was the day 0 update and then was the enrollment to Alpha Insider update ring. Since then the system gets its Alpha updates every 3 to 5 days on average and it's all been done overnight or during work hours.
Now something related to the actual exclusive game, pointed out on XEra, from a post Keith Beltramini who is a Bethesda Senior Lighting Artist made at https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eanqOD This indeed looks to be quite the engine upgrade. Plenty of pics posted there too.
cheapchips
Veteran
I'd like the Mass Effectiness to be visiting locations with distinct look/cultures/main stories and then a chunk of Bethesda procedural open world RPGness slapped on top of that.
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It doesn’t look like that type of game honestly. Seems really grounded I think.
Kugai Calo
Regular
Just keep it offline?...
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Is this the reason why you can't play an Xbox game that is downloading an update? So everybody with not-great internet can be blocked from playing a game for hours. I must admit I didn't know this was even a thing and I'm not a fan. My internet is crap and there is nothing I can do about it.
The two-stage game update process is gone with PS5, updates still happen in the background but applying them is pretty much instant. What took time on PS3 and PS4 with HDDs was that sometimes, depending on how fragmented a game install was after an update, the PS3 and PS4 would do some defragging and write a new contiguous game install to the HDD. I/O was slow enough without extra seeks!
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