Skyrim PS3 performance issues put to rest in patch 1.4

It’s no secret that Skyrim on the PlayStation 3 is, well, a broken mess. Ever since the game launched back in November, users have been reporting massive performance issues that render the game unplayable after playing the game for between 30 minutes to an hour.

Bethesda has attempted to fix the issue in the past (to no avail), but now it looks like the developer has sorted out the issue and an upcoming update due out at some point this month, patch 1.4, will address the performance issue once and for all.

The massive and unfortunate performance issues was apparently the result of a save file getting too large, and the only fix for PlayStation 3 users was to restart their PlayStation 3 after about every 30 minutes of playtime.

Back in December, Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer explained that Skyrim’s performance problems on PlayStation 3 was not an easy fix.

“It’s an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored off as bit flag differences compared to the placed instances in the main .esm + DLC .esms,” he explained.

“As the game modifies any placed instance of an object, those changes are stored off into what is essentially another .esm. When you load the save game, you’re loading all of those differences into resident memory.”

The fix may be coming a bit too late for some, but it’s good to hear that the issue is finally being put to rest. Skyrim is an amazing game, and I’d hate to know that some users can’t experience it as it was intended, or even at all.

Source: Bethesda