What’s the deal with Bathesda’s latest adventure Skyrim? Well aside from the fact that it is awesomely addictive, Skyrim is suffering from a PlayStation 3 “only” unresolved lag issue that is compromising the experience for many PS3 owners. Although I haven’t started playing Skyrim, but I am a bet afraid that by the time I will hit the 60 Hours mark I will reach the pinnacle of my adventure. Apparently there have been many speculations regarding the origin of the problem and the correct methods to resolve it. Patch 1.2 was released by Bathesda to resolve some issues including the lag problem, however the problem still persists. According to many users, not only Patch 1.2 have not fixed the issue, but also made things worse, as they are now experiencing more issues, including the infamous flying backward dragon glitch. Dragon Flying Backward after patch 1.2 That pushed Bathesda to release a statement apologizing for many fans and promising a more accurate research before releasing a future patch. Press Here for full statement given by Bathesda After the holidays, we’ll continue to release regular updates for the game – through full title updates, as well as incremental ‘gameplay updates’ to fix whatever issues come up along with rebalancing portions of the game for difficulty or exploits. We plan on having a lot of these, not just a few. Overall, you should expect updates to be hitting the PC and Steam earlier and more often, as that’s a process we control. Console updates will follow, as they must be certified and processed by those manufacturers. We all know this is a huge game, and everyone has a different experience. We’ll continue to do everything we can to make the game better and better for as many people as possible every day. We’ve also realised that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care. If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this. To be safe, we are prioritising code side fixes right now over data fixes. Quest and balance issues are usually data, and those will start rolling in a large way with the January updates.” Last week, Joshua Sawyer “Ex Bathesda developer who worked on Fallout: New Vegas and a previous Elder Scrolls game” released a very conteversial comment referring the problem to an engine-level issue. Sawyer explanation is build on the fact that the PS3 has a divided memory pool. It is an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored. We’re talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment … Hmm, obviously my next question will be how large we talking here, Ex. Bathesda employee? Bathesda’s, clearly been on the defensive side here, PR and marketing vise president Pete Hines denied the explanation through Twitter , offering the following tips to improve game performance: – Turn off auto saves. This can cause temporary stuttering since the PS3 saves these files in the background. This is most noticeable with large saves when fast traveling to a new area or entering a new area that auto saves. – Clear space on your hard drive. Skyrim makes heavy use of the hard drive, and freeing up space on here seems to help many people. Hard drive speeds also differ in PS3 models. Some users have reported increase performance by upgrading their drives. – Waiting for time to pass. Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you’ve done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items. Saving, resetting, and loading after this will have the largest effect. Really Pete? Waiting for time to pass? I am suppose to spend my precious gaming time in Skyrim resting? Well, Bathesda issued a NEW statement yesterday saying that they are already reaching out to a number of PS3 owners whom still have been experiencing issues in terms of the large save file and the lag. Here is the full statement: While the 1.2 update fixed the long-term play issues for most PS3 users, we are aware that is not the case for some. We’ve been reaching out to a number of those users to collect save games, so we can take a look at their specific issues. Right now we know it’s not one thing, but a combination of smaller ones that some folks are seeing, but others are not. Some seem to be the PS3 autosaving in the background (you can turn that off), some may be SPU AI updates, and some may relate to dynamic system memory allocation. “These fixes are not in the current 1.3 update that is in final testing, but will be in future ones. We understand how frustrating it can be when your game is having issues, and we thank all of you for your continued feedback and patience. Rest assured we take your gameplay experience seriously and will continue working on this until it’s resolved. So .. the new patch will not address the current problems with the game? Yeah, that’s an arrow to the knee alright! My concerns are clearly that developers are not making enough effort to test their games before release. In some cases the release date set by publishers are the main concern. Hey, they might be making some progress here. at least they’ve acknowledged the issue and seem to be committed to resolve it. That’s an improvement I guess, but when I pay almost a $100 for some good time, I know that didn’t sound right, I expect quality product people. Watch out for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review by Pedro, who is working hard on giving you an insight on one of the most promising nominees for the game of the year award.

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Skyrim: A Shout To Game Developers

Back to Karkland lands today on PS3! One week early on Playstation 3! Nice to see EA show us some love. This is what the developer had to say. If you are a Battlefield 3 Limited Edition owner, you are entitled to this entire expansion pack at no extra charge and you can get it from the in-game store or the PlayStation Store. Otherwise, you can buy it for $14.99 starting today, from the game’s in-game store or from the PlayStation Store. Every future expansion pack for Battlefield 3 will also be available one week early exclusively on PlayStation 3, just like Back to Karkand. Once you have downloaded Back to Karkand, the four new maps (Wake Island, Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman, and Sharqi Peninsula) will be available in the server browser and in the Quick Match filter settings just like the nine maps from the base game. There will be servers that mix and match maps from the base game and Back to Karkand, so you will never have to commit to playing either base game or Back to Karkand maps in your gaming session Source: PlayStation.Blog

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Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand Hits PS3 Today

Robert Bowling posted on the official Call of Duty forums what the first five updates have fixed and what to expect from patch 1.06. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Patches 1.01-1.05) Enabled Theater, Vault, Private Match options, Elite and Facebook functionality for Launch Day. Fix for YouTube video upload on SD TVs. Matchmaking Improvements.

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Robert Bowling Addresses Modern Warfare 3 Patches

The podcast is back and in good form after taking a week off because of the holiday! I hope you all had a good one, ate plenty of turkey and what have you, I sure did. Now it’s time to kick back by the fire, keeping warm, and listening to your favorite podcast of the week. Tune in to catch FooBear and myself discuss all the video games news that’s been coming out, as well as catching up on FooBear’s gaming issues as of late. We also ran a little bit longer than usual on this one, and we didn’t even get to talk about Assassin’s Creed Revelations! BAH! Next time…Gadget…next time. Enter the secret word(s) mentioned in the PS3BlogCast to earn 75 points. The first 10 people to enter it correctly get double points! As always, we want to remind you that the PS3BlogCast is listed on iTunes! So please subscribe and rate/review us there. You can also leave a voicemail for us by calling PS3-888-BLOG or if you want to contact us via email for us you can do so here . We have a dedicated forum for the PS3BlogCast so you can leave your questions and feedback there as well. Here’s a list of some things (or everything) we discussed: Battlefield 3 PS3 patch is live Skyrim Patch Uncharted Comic Issue 1 is released GamePro Shutting Down Title Fight Creator of The Last Guardian might be leaving Sony Price of Games GameStop listing Vita memory card prices HD PVR My Battlefield 3 clips FooBear’s Sad Story IGN’s Flaming MW3 music parody video

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PS3BlogCast Episode 27

Another Modern Warfare 3 patch is in the works and will be available this week. Infinity Ward’s creative strategist, Robert Bowling, revealed that there is an update in progress and there would be some re-balancing. The update that will be released this week will re-balance the FMGs, as the dual FMGs are overpowered compared to

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Modern Warfare 3 Patch To Re-Balance FMGs

Know what’s a great way to celebrate the week after thanksgiving? With no retail releases for either PS3 or PSP! That’s right, this week you’ll all have to make do with offerings from the digital realm of gaming entertainment. The highlight for the week is the Sly Collection being made available on the PSN Store either in a bundle or as separate purchases. Price is the same in the end (actually, it’s $0.03 more expensive in the bundle) and you can choose to get one of the 3 games or go all the way and the the collection itself. This is great news for those that can’t track a physical copy of the digital release as it was released with a very small print run. On the other hand… we get a Voltron game! Indeed, the 80′s are back in style! What made the cut for this week? Let’s find out! PSN RELEASES You Can Buy The Sly Collection Right Here! You Can Buy Modern Warfare 2 Right Here! You Can Buy deBlob 2 Right Here! PSOne Classics PS2 Classics

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Releases for the Week (November 28th-December 4th)

It is rumored that Modern Prestige has revealed the names of maps for Modern Warfare 3′s first map pack. The names are Nostalgic, Concrete,  Italy, Morning Wood, Overwatch (Spec Ops map from Modern Warfare 2) and Park. It has been speculated that Infinity Ward is working on a map pack that will be released just

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Modern Warfare 3 Map Pack Names & Date Revealed?

Howdy fellow PlayStation gamers. The month of November marks the fifth anniversary of Sony’s PlayStation 3,only in North America and Japan. The system didn’t launch until 2007 in Europe as we’re sure you may remember. But that doesn’t mean our fellow gamers from across the pond can’t mark the occasion as well. The PS3 got off to a rocky start in 2006 however, thanks to the support of gamers and developers Sony’s successor to the PS2 survived through the rough stages of its life cycle. To celebrate we here at the blog decided to share our top PS3 gaming moments. We ask our readers to do the same if they like. Which game made you go “Wow! Did that just happen?!” or which PS3 game has provided the most entertainment for you, your friends or family? Share it here! Jay : My 60GB PS3 getting the YLOD the day before my GT5 tournament. And the subsequent 3-4 month wait to have it repaired by GopherMods for an RSX reball, which has done a wonderful job and my PS3 hasn’t had any problems since. Getting my original PS3 back was reminiscent of the day I got it brand new. Except I had more games to play. And I was used to the amazing graphical capabilities already lol. Sakinah : My favorite gaming moment on the PS3 occurred a few years ago during Little Big Planet. This was before our local phone company upgraded its Internet service from dial-up to DSL. I needed a little extra sacks to unlock the x3 and x4 prize bubbles so I got my younger brother ( the Xbox owner who never played LBP before ) and older sister ( the occasional gamer who loves LBP ) to help. We all were having a blast with the game even though we died a lot. It was one of those fun family moments that don’t happen to often and I enjoyed every minute of it. Cheeto : I am a new PS3 user. There is a good story how I got my PS3. I remember that my wife just gave birth to our second daughter ”Maya” and I was heading home to grab a few things. I saw this small appliance shop right next to the hospital entrance and I remembered that she needed a hair dryer, so I stopped by, grabbed one really quick and on my way out I saw this medium sized box near the shop’s entrance with the PlayStation logo on top, so I asked the owner what is it and he said ”if I recall correctly” ”Some rich kid decided that he wants a Wii instead of a PS3, so he traded this back. He only had it for one week”. I took the PS3 out of the box. It was barley touched 320GB model with a Dualshock 3 controller and a copy of LittleBigPlanet and inFamous. The guy gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I purchased the PS3, left the hair dryer behind since I didn’t have enough cash on me, then rushed back to the hospital. My wife asked me: is this the hair dryer? I said: no honey, this is much more! I will always remember May 27th 2011 as the day Maya was born and the day I purchased my first PS3! Tosh : Some of my favorite PS3 moments are recent ones. When I got Kung-Fu live , it was such a treat and a workout! It offered something unique and new. It loved showing it to my friends and family. Then a sequel to You Don’t Know Jack was released on the PS3 this year. This is the best party game hands down for me. I was really impressed by the game. It’s a blast to play with a group. There is always fits of laughter every time. I highly recommend picking up this game. It’s cheap, but has a lot of value!

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PS3 5th Anniversary: Share Your Memorable Gaming Moments!

With the growing rumors implying that Sony’s and Microsoft’s next consoles may being revealed within the next year or so, I’m beginning to wonder just what it will cost to purchase software on these new systems. The price for video games has increased with the introduction of every new home console over the years. Back in the day games for the PS1 cost $40, the price for PS2 titles increased to $50 and today a brand new PS3 game will set you back $60. See the trend? Assuming the price for a new console game will set you back $70 will gamers finally ask how much is too much? If the next gen gaming experience is anything like what we’re seeing today – single player campaigns only lasting 6-8 hours, extra content that could easily fit in the game being offered later as paid dlc, online passes- will it be worth it? The first next generation machine we actually know will release in 2012, the Nintendo Wii U, may give us an idea on what we can expect from the future of software pricing. Games on the Nintendo Wii are usually priced at $50, this includes AAA titles like the newly released Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. In comparison a big AAA title on either the PS3 or 360 will set you back $60. The $10 difference is partially due to the fact that the Wii doesn’t offer the same kind of high definition graphics that the PS3 and 360 does. What does this have to do with the Wii U? doesn’t According to reports the Wii U is expected to be as powerful as current HD systems which could indicate that software for the console will cost more than its predecessor. If it does this could be a good preview of just how much more we’ll be paying for games on the PS4 and next Xbox. On the other hand if you listen to the analysts who assume that the digital age, made popular by the iPhone, Kindle and other similar devices, will soon replace disc format in home consoles then perhaps that may offset the cost of video game software. But the probability of that happening is unclear at this point since my crystal ball is still in the shop. We do know that Nintendo won’t be relying on digital downloads as the sole format in the Wii U and I’m going to make the bold prediction ( without my crystal ball ) that neither Sony nor Microsoft plans to ditch the disc based format in their next systems. So come 2013 or 2014 when the next big gaming machine launches, how much will you be willing to spend on video games?

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How Much Are You Willing To Spend On Software Next Gen?

Activision has corrected their error when it was reported that on November 8 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set the record for the number of players online at the same time on Xbox Live with 3.3 million. A press release was sent out yesterday that there were 1.4 million concurrent online players and 3.3

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Modern Warfare 3 Had 1.4 Million Simultaneous Users