Xbox One game install times longer than PS4: report

Now that the launch rush for the Xbox One is over, Kotaku took it upon themselves to test out game load times for both the PS4 and Xbox One. The result: Xbox One install times are still much longer than PS4.

Both consoles offer a feature that allows games to be played while they are installed in the background, but both consoles approach this differently.

The Xbox One in particular suffered from long install times for games on launch day, going against Microsoft’s tagline for the console that it’s “ready when you are.”

The reason why, as new Xbox One owners found out when first inserting a game disc, is because game updates needed to be installed before playing the games you’ve bought. As roughly over a million new Xbox One owners were connected to Xbox Live servers to perform these updates, bandwidth was constrained and updates would take forever to complete.

Now that it’s died down a little, Kotaku set about analysing how things looked for both consoles in a more level playing field.

The table below is a collection of the results Kotaku collected. Install times are measured in minutes and seconds and represented as “minutes:seconds.” The results are the time taken from disc insertion to when the UI prompts you that the game can be played.

Despite having a snappy 10Mb/s internet connection (which theoretically downloads at the rate of 1.2MB per second), Assassin’s Creed still took almost twice as long to install with the game update needing to be done in the beginning. Even offline, the game still takes nearly six minutes to reach the “Ready to Play!” notification, while the PS4 consistently sticks to an install that takes less than a minute.

For the rest of the titles tested (chosen for their smaller update sizes that ranged between 300-500MB), install times all took longer than five minutes to complete. In the case of NBA Live 2014 and FIFA 14 (which would both be popular in the US and Europe respectively) install times are just over sixteen minutes with the update included.

Why is this the case?

Sony’s method of installing games was something that was heavily discussed when the console was in development, according to System Architect Mark Cerny in an interview given to Kotaku at the PS4 review event for journalists in New York days before the console’s launch. Cerny said that developers complained about long level load times on the PS3 thanks to data being read on the Blu-Ray drive and wanted to solve that issue by installing all game data to the hard drive.

However, Sony appears to have found ways to speed up the process for install times to get the game and the initial level, audio tracks, menu systems, 3D models and other assets copied over first, allowing players to begin the game as soon as possible and continue to stream the game data from disc to drive in the background. That same streaming feature is also used for the update processes, where updates for the game will be downloaded in the background without making players wait to dive into single-player campaigns.

Microsoft works on the same system, but it’s clear that they had less time to perfect it. Because the Xbox One also installs every game to the hard drive by default, the way the two systems behave should be very similar.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, their multiple feature backtracks and withdrawals of DRM schemes over the past year may have lead them to redesign the install process and release it into the wild with the console, unoptimised. Couple that with nearly a million new customers all downloading the same update at the same time, and you’ll have a very messy launch experience if the servers are not prepared to handle the load.

This can and probably will change. Microsoft can mimic Sony’s methods and future games will not require day one updates to be functional, bringing the One up to roughly the same install times as the PS4.

Multiplayer won’t always benefit

Here’s the thing, though. The Xbox One downloads the updates required for a game on the first install so that you don’t have to wait for an update to the multi-player component to finish. For the PS4, the multi-player component would have to be installed first and updated before you can join a match. Waiting for that to complete downloading and installing could result in players waiting the same time as Xbox One owners.

This means that Sony approaches the disc install process on the basis that players will be okay with diving into the single-player campaigns first before going online. That’s a forced feature and not an option for players installing from the disc.

However, digital downloads are split into multiplayer and single player components and each downloaded on their own.

Is Microsoft’s approach better? That’s a question only owners of the console can answer and Xbox fans in South Africa will have to wait a little longer before they can get their hands on one. Perhaps by that point all the launch issues will be ironed out and this won’t be as heavily debated.

Source: Kotaku

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