Under the Hood - PSP Load Times

[wraggster]

Heres an excerpt

When you play a video game, you'll always have to wait for the game to load. From the moment you turn on your PlayStation or Xbox, you'll wait. Sometimes you might wait a few seconds, other times you might change the channel and watch a little golf. You'll even fruitlessly mash buttons in attempt to make the loading screens go by faster. When the game finally finishes loading, you might get to play some of it, and then you'll see another loading screen. It makes you wonder, when developers claim that a game has 40 hours worth of gameplay in it - do they factor in the time you spend staring out into space?

Recently, the PSP caught some heat for its inordinately long load times. Some users even posted videos on the Internet describing their experiences. One game in particular drew lots of ire: WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006. The game takes multiple minutes to start a match, regardless of whether you want to use a custom play mode or simply want a quick match. Long load times aren't anything new; but when you combine them with portable devices, they're sure to press a few buttons (pun intended).

We're certain that most of the issues arise from the UMD media and the optical drive. The PSP has to spin up the drive, seek across the disc, and load the data. All of these actions require large amounts of time in comparison to Nintendo's cartridge based system.

In the interests of gaming science, we decided to find out how long it takes the PSP to move you from a dull glassy eyed stare to actively playing. We tried to test every game currently out for the PSP, but instead had to settle for all the games we could get our mitts on. In the end, we managed to include over 80 games in the article, which should make for a good representative batch. Our tests showed that very few games could load up in under a minute. Many games took two or even three minutes. One game took four minutes to load - WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006.

Full article at Gamespot

[Makaveli777]

Loading times dont seem that long for me. Maybe Im patient.

[pibs]

Not to mention midnight club for the psp, wow that game takes ages to load >< they do have good graphics and all but the load times are killers

[Gene]

I really dont notice them at all.

[Broadus]

I never have any problems with loading times... Except on my PC, which would be related to my PC's abilities.
On my PS2 and PSP, I never feel like the loading times take too long. They seem reasonable to me.

[compoman386]

Quote: "Our tests showed that very few games could load up in under a minute."

Bull pies and horse feathers.
This is another Gamespot anti-psp load of BS. If the load times were as bad as they claim then I would have sold my PSP ages ago.
If you don't believe that Gamespot is anti-PSP biased, go look at their scores for your favourite PSP games, u will be surprised at how badly they score them.

[fistikuffs]

The load times are fine for me gta is pretty quick when you consider the size of it.

I reckon anyone who knows the agony of loading games on commodore 64 tape deck would have no problem with these load times. 20+ mins and then it crashes!!

[lmtlmt]

well if u dont want long load times use isos like me lol

[kayhanbakid]

i seriously thought something was wrong with my psp when i played smackdown vs. raw! load time is unbearable.

that's why i almost always play lumines. loads in less than 20 seconds i would guess.

(that's if i had to play a umd. HOMEBREW ROCKS!)

[Vega]

What the article fails to mention is that the long load times with smackdown vs raw ( 4 minute loads) occur when we try to play a season or exibition with a C.A.W (Create a Wrestler). Yes, it is unberable... It made me trade the game in... and I hope SD vs Raw 07 does not include such ridiculous loading times.