Pro Evolution Soccer (Winning Eleven) 2008 slows down on PS3

[Falconeer]

The title says it all.

Football could not be a big deal in Northern America people but the rest of the world waited for this since the release of the PS3. Yesterday game stores in my country had a polite queue just waiting for the truck with the boxes. Finally at 17.30 I got my copy and went home to share the joy with son.

Well, 5 seconds into the game and you can notice it: the game has MAJOR slowdowns. And I mean MAJOR! Some of the replays go down to like 5 fps but the whole game is just a messy slowed down mess.

Honestly, I am shocked. The FUCKING PS3 can't handle a football sim, which played great on the PS1 and 2 for a decade? It's not even that good graphically! FUCK FUCK! I am footbally mad!

Seriously, for the first time I am wondering WHY IN HELL I bought a PS3. This is embarassing.

[trias_e]

Shoulda got it on the PC?

Seriously though, that blows.  As a yank that loves winning eleven with a cake-like infatuation, I feel your pain.

I'm also glad I don't have a PS3.

[schild]

I see a patch fixing this pronto. Also, what firmware are you all on?

[stray]

Lol, why in the hell are you blaming the console itself?

[schild]

Lol, why in the hell are you blaming the console itself?

I think he did that so that we could post this face:

[HAMMER FRENZY]

Man, Pro Evo plays just fine on 360 doesn't it? 

[Grand Design]

Until it red rings.

[HAMMER FRENZY]

I have a new one with a Falcon, so no ring for me.

[Grand Design]

But you're unique and special.



Most 360 owners are not.

[schild]

I have a new one with a Falcon, so no ring for me.

Hasn't been out long enough to know. ^_^

[Bunk]

But you're unique and special.



Most 360 owners are not.

Grr... It's like people are just popping up with trolly comments this morning, begging me to respond. Instead of refuting you however, I shall take the high road and call you a cockmuncher instead.

[stray]

To be serious though, the 360 is a pretty forgiving system to code for, for the time being... I don't mean to make this sound like an attack, but the large shared mem space and general purpose cores allow developers to be a little more lazy. Hell, most of them are barely segmenting across the 360's other cores yet. They're still coding for it like it's business as usual, like a single cpu PC from 3 years ago. Which doesn't work on the PS3, but these assholes try to do it anyways.

And eventually, that's not going to cut it for either system.

[Grand Design]

But you're unique and special.



Most 360 owners are not.

Grr... It's like people are just popping up with trolly comments this morning, begging me to respond. Instead of refuting you however, I shall take the high road and call you a cockmuncher instead.

So, I'm not allowed to make a tongue in cheek comment about the 360?

What is there to 'refute' about that anyway?

The 360 can overheat.

Most people do not have and will not buy a Falcon 360.

Most people will not have to replace their original 360.

That makes Falcon owners unique and special.

Why do I have to explain this?

Can I still call you a name, even though I took the time to respond?

How about Tardgina?

Bunk, you are a Tardgina.

[WayAbvPar]

This isn't out on the 360 yet, correct? I was under the impression that it was scheduled around Thanksgiving.

[HaemishM]

All I can say is boo hoo. Try playing FIFA 08 on the fucking Wii. It's a goddamn shitty gimped up mess. At least your slideshow lets you play some kind of season mode with transfers, right?

I should have known EA King of the Shovelware Sports Franchises Sports would assfuck any games on the Wii, but they didn't have to be so blatant about it.

[Falconeer]

What are you talking about Haemish? Are there other football games beside Pro Evo? Does not compute!

Yes, there's the usual entertaining Master League. Still have to explore if there's anything juicy and new in there.

Anyway, tried to go online today and got a Greetings! from "the" Network saying "We are sorry but we are having harsh difficulties so if you can't play it right (forgot to mention AT ALL) please know we are working on it!".

Obviously, couldn't join a single game. Ha. Better luck tomorrow?

[HaemishM]

What are you talking about Haemish? Are there other football games beside Pro Evo? Does not compute!

Unfortunately on the Wii, there is no Pro Evo until next year. So yes, there are other football games. FIFA 07 was one of my all-time favorite games ever. I just hope the Wii version of Pro Evo makes me put up the PS2 version of FIFA 08 because I really hate myself for supporting EA Sports after the Wii version.

[Yegolev]

This thread is awesome, both a console slapfight and a soccer-game slapfight.   

[MisterNoisy]

All I can say is boo hoo. Try playing FIFA 08 on the fucking Wii. It's a goddamn shitty gimped up mess. At least your slideshow lets you play some kind of season mode with transfers, right?

I should have known EA King of the Shovelware Sports Franchises Sports would assfuck any games on the Wii, but they didn't have to be so blatant about it.

Dude.  Seriously, it's less about the whole 'EA' thing as it is almost every third party wondering why they should bother.  Even the few genuinely good games for the console have pretty shitty sales relative to the total userbase unless they come with a remote (not saying that WiiPlay is worth a damned thing, but it's the only game that's sold anything worth noting on the Wii).  As EA, you don't have the ability to throw in a remote to pad sales, so why do anything beyond a low-budget port of the PS2 version and add waggle?  I mean - the soccer-game loving Wii owner market has got to be huge, right?   

[Trippy]

They're still coding for it like it's business as usual, like a single cpu PC from 3 years ago. Which doesn't work on the PS3, but these assholes try to do it anyways.

If that works on the Xbox 360 (and I'm doubting that it does) it works on the PS3 -- the Cell's PPE is roughly equivalent to a single core on the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU.

[stray]

My bad... Yes, you're correct. Bad illustration, and I didn't explain myself well enough. They are similar PPE's, but still completely different architectures to make that all moot. One of which (the 360) is still more friendly to an older method for writing to ram and handling assets. I'm having trouble finding it at the moment, but I recall an article that went into the differences between load balancing and load sharing, programming by frames and programming by streams. I won't dare try to articulate it myself, but since you're a programmer (I think?), I'm sure you know more about it than I do. Basically though, that's where my "business as usual" jibe came from.

Also, just to mention, I'm not trying to say one is better or worse than the other. Just different.

[Margalis]

Dude.  Seriously, it's less about the whole 'EA' thing as it is almost every third party wondering why they should bother.  Even the few genuinely good games for the console have pretty shitty sales relative to the total userbase unless they come with a remote (not saying that WiiPlay is worth a damned thing, but it's the only game that's sold anything worth noting on the Wii).

"Sales relative to userbase" is a meaningless metric, especially when your user base is large.

As EA, you don't have the ability to throw in a remote to pad sales, so why do anything beyond a low-budget port of the PS2 version and add waggle? 

Sadly that is not the strategy EA uses. It appears as though the Wii versions of games are significantly different from on other systems, not just in graphics but in feature sets, as though they've spent time on making them suck on purpose.

I think a lot of people would be *happier* with PS2 + waggle.

It's hard to say what EA is doing. You would figure they would just take the existing codebase and add waggle and call it a day, but instead they appear to create the Wii versions from the ground up to different specs, ending up with more work for a worse product.

Actually I just figured it out: it's EA.

[Falconeer]

Pro-G, in a disappointed review by Wesley Yin-Poole, quotes something I never heard before in the world of tiple-A games that actually don't get canceled (read: not MMOG):

PES executive producer Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka himself has said that he was "shocked" at the PS3 slowdown and that he doesn't have a clue why it's happening.

If I can't blame the console then who? Smedley?







P.S: Stray, I am not really blaming the console.

[MisterNoisy]

"Sales relative to userbase" is a meaningless metric, especially when your user base is large.

You're right - not sure why I qualified that - it should just read 'sales'.

That said, I think the GH3/RB sales for Wii this holiday will be amazing.

[HaemishM]

As EA, you don't have the ability to throw in a remote to pad sales, so why do anything beyond a low-budget port of the PS2 version and add waggle? 

You know, it would have been fantastic if they had just done a port of the PS2 version with waggle. Though the waggle could have been better, it wasn't terrible in and of itself.

But instead they built the game from the ground up as a Wii game. They threw out EVERYTHING about the other versions of the game and started from scratch, as if they never had a successful franchise. Even the gameplay on the field, you know, the pre-existing graphic engine, the controls, the options, was completely new. Shit, the GAMECUBE version was better. They could have taken the 07 Gamecube version and added waggle and it would have been better. Instead, they gutted it. No manager mode, shitty lagtastic menus, less compiled stats, no transfers in season mode, and there were even less options for passing in game. Had they set out with the goal of making the most gimped version of soccer on a console ever, they could not have fucked up more fantastically.

And the Madden 08 was even worse, because at least it wasn't the first iteration of that series on the console. It was the exact same game as the 07 Wii version, only with more bugs, laggier menus and shitty shit shit shit online play.

It makes me fabulously stabby.