10 minutes and still on 1%.

I wouldn't normally update, but it wouldn't let me play SCIV online without one.

Sony really needs to get their online in gear - crap like this is constant and hurts them. Maybe this is why Home was delayed/canceled since it could never run properly on the PSN's current structure.

...and now it crapped out with an error message, and I can't seem to download or update shit!

I swear, what a bunch of crap. They force you to need an update in order to play a crucial component of a game, but the update is unavailable because the system they have in place is buggy as hell. Argh! I'm so pissed right now.

Dvdlovr24's post was unclear as to which update he was referring. I wasn't able to find anything about the system update, but did find the GT5 update was coming Friday (which I also knew nothing about).

I'm glad you found my attempt at posting something useful so amusing

It must be a regional thing. I never encounter problems with updates... a slight bit slower than I'd prefer though. In contrast, I had tons of issues with XBL downloads.

Really? I never hear anything on that front other than having to update repeatedly because the cache needs to be cleared. Even that is pretty rare.

It went through waves. I would have difficulties downloading updates for a few weeks... then clear up. A few months later another wave. I know not everyone experienced that. And when XBL was out last year, it was down for a little over 3 weeks for me even though for others it was 1 or 2 weeks. And down for 3 weeks for my brother in NY.

But I'm not even talking about downloads - I'm talking about updates - the 360 updates take literal seconds and are instantaneous. These PS3 updates take forever, with a seemingly endless barrage of hoops to jump through, if the damn thing even decides to download...

When you say seconds are talking about 10-20 seconds, or like 120-180 seconds? Unless you're on some super connection, if it's only taking seconds there can't be much to the update.

BTW, I'm asking because I don't own a 360, so I have no idea.

If you're talking about system updates, there's a major difference between 360 and PS3. 360 updates are incremental - they only update small portions of the OS. On PS3, the entire firmware gets overwritten.

Game-specific updates are really quick on 360 - several seconds at most. The few game-specific updates I've gotten on PS3 take quite a bit longer, partly because there are separate download and install phases.

In general, things of comparable size always take much longer to download on PS3 than on 360, at least for me, and I have both systems connected to the router by Ethernet cable. I usually just flip over to the 360 or Tivo while waiting for PS3 downloads to complete due to how slow they are.

Thanks for the info.

The system update difference does make a lot of sense. MS has an OS running on the 360 (which is obviously just a PC under the hood). Sony's OS runs on the firmware itself so it's going to require larger downloads. It's not all just firmware though because when I first bought my PS3 a year after launch I had to do two updates in a row... you can't always just get the most recent firmware.

Sony's download speed doesn't really bother me all that much. It's slow, but I'm connected wirelessly and I seem to get about 100kB/s when it's working which isn't terrible. I know MS also has limits on the size of games you can download while Sony doesn't so that makes the problem worse. A 1.5 Gig game takes forever but a 350 Meg game isn't nearly as bad. Sony's main problem of course is that their connection doesn't always work and connections get dropped all the time.

That makes sense. It also makes bi-monthly updates seem a bit ridiculous. If you are rewriting the whole system every time wouldn't it make more sense to save your features to a couple updates a year?

Sure the arcade games are smaller(90% are under 50MB), but demo sizes are very comparable. It's also not unheard of for a map pack to be around 1GB. There are plenty of 'big' files that are on the XBL Marketplace.

Individual game updates(retail or DLC) take 5-10 seconds, tops, and that's including a reboot of the system.

How about fix the firmware so that it supports incremental updates?
I remember when the ummm... thinking... Jericho! I remember when the Jericho demo came out. I started the download on both the PS3 and 360 as near simultaneously as I could. I was nearly done playing the 360 version before the PS3 was done downloading...

I didn't do them simultaneously as it would have slowed them both but I did d/l Burnout: Paradise on both systems: XBLM ~ 20 minutes. PSN ~ 3 hours*

*during non-peak hours.

And then you have to install on top of that. I know it's a dead horse but c'mon. The PS3 came out AFTER the 360.

It is definitely a dead horse, but there's not much else to discuss at the moment.

I think PixelJunk Eden will be my first release date purchase from PSN. I'm in love with the demo. I finally gave PAIN a whirl last night. What a dumb, crazy-ass, excuse for a game... it was a blast. Not sure how much actual replay value it will hold, but it definitely kept my interest for a couple hours last night.

I am psyched for Eden too. Have they announced a price? I'd expect $10 but I'd like to find out for sure.

Any other thoughts on it? Still playing and/or still as interesting after the first 2 parts? About how long would you guess that it is overall?

It would seem like something to get bored of quickly, but I keep getting caught up in trying to improve a run and keep trying them over and over. I also get caught up in dumb activities like trying to dismantle the box tower 1 by 1. It takes try after try, but I finally get it. Fun game and a great $5 buy. I may even buy the expansion, but have had no interest in the extra characters for a buck each.

I was hooked on the Mime challenge last night. It seemed very difficult. I opened the second difficulty but couldn't even finish it.

Ah, I didn't realize that but probably should have.

What's interesting is that MS's has got their shit together for XBOX Live, but their updates for XP are slow as hell. I turned on a machine at work after it had been off for a while and it took 4 hours to download and install the 72 updates I needed (on a 22megabit connection). If only they could get XBOX speeds there!

Okay, this is just fucking bullshit. It wouldn't let me download the update last night at midnight, and it won't let me do it now at 4:30 in the afternoon. Seriously, what the fuck!

It either hangs on the "checking now" screen, or it gets to the download and craps out and gives me an error message after it gets to around 20% (which takes about 10 minutes). Why do they force an update like this (not allowing people to play online without it) and not be ready for everyone to download within 24 hours?

This is just plain horseshit. Fuck you Sony! Fuck you in your fucking ass!

Seriously, I have no idea why Sony online model is so damn broken. It couldn't just be that it's free -- it's seriously flawed in every way. Waiting for Home is such a joke; they need to have their basic interface up and running right before they even THINK of turning it into a virtual world.

Couldn't you download it on a computer and transfer it with a USB drive or other portable storage? I usually do that because it's faster.

That's a god idea, but I tried it, and after it took minutes just to get the download started, it was coming in so slow (to my PC, mind you, and I have a pretty fast DSL) that the download info told me it would take approximately 22 hours and 34 minutes to download the 130MB file (took 10 minutes to get to 1%) - to give you an idea, it usually takes about 5 minutes to download a file that size to my PC.

So I'll say again, fuck you Sony! Fuck you in your ass!

I didn't have any issues updating the firmware today, but the download was as slow as usual. The really need to solve this problem. It took forever to download a 350MB game I bought and then I had to turn around and download and install a 350MB patch for it. Took an hour at least before I was actually playing anything.

Ok, everybody complains about Sony download speeds (and rightly so). Is there anything we can actually do about it?

Sign a petition (that no one will read)?
Post in some other forum Sony execs look at?
Email Sony directly?
???