Skyrim Dawnguard DLC for PS3 might never happen

Skyrim’s vampire-enhanced Dawnguard expansion has been out on Xbox and PC for almost a month already, but a launch date for PS3 has not been announced and now might never be announced – according to Bethesda, there’s some huge problem with the game that they’ve been unable to fix.

In an update over on the official forums, Bethesda community manager Matt “Gstaff” Grandstaff dropped the bad news, saying:

Earlier in the month, we provided an update on Dawnguard’s status for PS3.

It’s been a few weeks, and we wanted to make sure everyone knows where we’re at with Dawnguard. Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you’re talking about sizable content like Dawnguard. We have tried a number of things, but none of them solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. The PS3 is a powerful system, and we’re working hard to deliver the content you guys want. Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we’ve been working on either, so the issues of adding content get even more complicated. This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.

We wish we had a more definitive answer right now. We understand the frustration when the same content is not available on all platforms. When we have an update, we will certainly let you know. We deeply appreciate all the time and support you have given us, and we’ll keep doing our best to return that.

The ongoing issue may or may not be related to the PS3’s savegame and frame-rate bug that stymied players shortly after launch. At the time, Fallout: New Vegas developer Josh Sawyer said he’d had similar problems with the PS3 version of the game (which uses the same engine), and predicted the glitch would be further complicated by DLC. Bethesda boss Pete Hines denied his claims, however, saying that “He brings up issues we solved long ago.”