Remember when you got a new game, brought it home, opened it, slapped it into your console, and it immediately played? Remember when you got out an older game that you hadn't played in a long time, slapped it in, and immediately started playing?

Ah, those were the days.

I've seem other complaints about this, but for us exceptionally infrequent gamers, the current state of console affairs is atrocious. I plugged in GTA V into my PS3 to get in a few minutes of gaming during a quick break today. Forget it.

First, I had to download an update for the PS3. Now, a download, install, and reboot several minutes later, I'm downloading ELEVEN FREAKIN' UPDATES FOR GTA V!!1! Good heavens.

If it takes me 30 minutes to prepare to play, and I had, say, 20 minutes of free time, that equals... let's see... carry the one... NO TIME FOR GAMING.

The worst part? I played this game the last time I went through this dance to get things running, and... I enjoyed it! Why not let me keep playing from that version until you've got the downloads ready? So I miss some online content in some games, these games should have some idea of what it can offer me to pass the time while it gets the rest of itself ready to play.

There's no reason we can't download this crud in the background, and install it at 2am. Or, in my case, any hour between now and late next month, when I finally have a free 20 minutes for gaming again.

Here are the sizes of the update, later with times that my laptop said it was when I noticed the download started.

  1. 103 MB
  2. 142 MB
  3. 65 MB 9:02
  4. 94 MB 9:06
  5. 67 MB 9:06
  6. 1314 MB 9:07... 27% at 9:13 (my cxn is faster than this)... 44% 9:25
  7. 74 MB 9:30
  8. The previous might have been 8. I missed one here. Didn't feel like staring at progress bars forever.
  9. 113 MB 9:33
  10. 247 MB 9:35
  11. 77 MB 9:39
9:42, after some cloud stuff, I can play. OH NO, NO MORE FACEBOOK FEATURES?!?!!!

I wasn't paying attention to the time at first, and started installing the PS3 update before walking away, but I think 50 minutes to get GTA V online isn't an exaggeration.

Labels: ,