PC and PS3 Skyrim owners have been waiting to play the new Dawnguard DLC for quite some time. This week at Quakecon, Bethesda released some good news, which was unfortunately marred with some bad.
The good news is; all you PC gamers out there who’ve been itching to get your Vampire on can rejoice – it’s now available for download and purchase on Steam. Now for the bad news: Bethesda also announced that the PS3 version of the new DLC is just not ready yet.
This will no doubt come as a jaw-dropping, Bethesda cursing blow to our PS3 allied readers, many of whom will have expecting Dawnguard to be available this week at the latest, to coincide with the PC release. Bethesda issued a statement recently on their Blog that explains their reasoning;
“We are not satisfied yet with Dawnguard’s performance on the PS3. We would like for everyone to have a chance to play Dawnguard, but we aren’t going to release it for PS3 knowing that some people’s experience in Skyrim will be worse.”
So there it is; frowny face. It’s possible that Bethesda are being super careful after the water-freezing issue that plagued players after a previous update. You can probably imagine the comment response from PS3 fans on Bethesda’s blog so I won’t go into it here, suffice to say, most of it is pretty pointed.
Of course we can’t be entirely infuriated at Bethesda, if their product isn’t ready for technical reasons; it’s their prerogative to hold off the release. The same guys who are flaming them for their tardiness, would also be flaming them if their game didn’t work properly.
Alas, it looks like Sony-heads are just going to have to wait that little bit longer. Infuriated? Vent your frustration below; we feed off your hatred.
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8 Comments
While its true that the comments from fellow PS3 Skyrim players are pretty ‘right in your face’ atm(ones i’ve made included), i think its a situation Bethesda has brought about through its own recent actions.
*Dawnguard(DG) was not promised on a particular date for PS3 or PC
*Patches 1.6 and 1.7 were not promised on a set date for PS3 or PC
*Bethesda is well within its right as a provider of entertainment media is well within its rights to release content to whomever it wished, in whatever timeframe it wishes
Those three points are in no way contested by reasonable people. However, Bethesda’s customer service(in terms of providing information is a timely and forthright manner) has been woefully inadequate in this ongoing series of events. And however much ppl will rage at not getting content when they feel they should get it, if Bethesda had stepped in front of delays and owned them initially-we wouldn’t be here.
“Skyrim DLC, initially in the form of Dawnguard, will be an Xbox 360 exclusive for a limited time. After which, the DLC will be released to remaining platforms as the content is finalized for them asap.”
Something that simple, would have prevented so much idle speculation that popped up in their now infamous month of silence. Instead eager hopeful players were given the rather dubious and ominous tweet(a tweet? really? not even a short official blerb?) from a marketing haunch, which turned speculation into downright anger from some.
Are some people going overboard with their frustration? Of course they are. But more importantly, is it justified? And sadly, gonna have to it is.
You have it totally right. I’ve commented elsewhere saying I would be more than happy to wait for Dawnguard on PS3 if I knew why the hell I was waiting. Being told by Bethesda that they want to improve the performance of this DLC is perfectly reasonable to me, and I am happy to wait for however long bugfixes and performance improvements will take. What made me rather unhappy was, as you mentioned, the month of silence regarding the release of this content on non-XBox platforms. Making it an xbox exclusive is annoying, but can be dealt with. Having no idea why or for how long the PS3 would be denied was simply torture. At least now we have the why part?
while i agree with what is stated above by Spiritreaver my objection and post on other website that my have been abit too much are these:
bethesda and todd howard said that they would be supporting skyrim over all platforms and while they’ve bent over backwards for xbox and a little for pc they’ve done nothing apart from make the ps3 version worse. also the ps3 and pc where told that DG would be released almost together which could still be the case but i doubt it, this brings me to the last point they stated on their blog that its being delayed because thier not happy with it performance on the ps3 which they said was stronger than the xbox. now please correct me if i’m wrong but shouldn’t that mean that the ps3 would be able to handle anything that the xbox can and it should be simply a matter of changing the code to work for ps3.
i dont know if there doing this because it is really working badly or something else like maybe patch 1.7 has been turn down because it doesn’t work. only time will tell but i find myself drawn away from skyrim to other games.
HURRY UP BETHESDA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bethesda is crazy if they think I’m ever going to buy Dawnguard considering I can’t play Skyrim without it freezing. Bastards!
Look at this sequence of events:
(Pre release)
Lots of hype about the game, of course, but specifically Pete Hines is out pubicly declaring how the platforms all have a great parity – including framerate, fidelity and visuals.
Todd Howard is saying they are using a ‘whole new engine’ pre-release.
11.11.11 – Knowingly released Skyrim in a BROKEN state. Todd Howard admitted this on Kotaku
(1.2 and 1.3 were both released but did nothing for the major problems on the PS3)
02.09.12
PS3 got zilch support until four months later when 1.4 was released. First time many players could play the game without insane FPS drops.
03.20.12 – Patch 1.5 is available on PSN. Cause game breaking freeze EVERY time the player enters water.
Are you effing kidding me? The water effect was a ‘new feature’ right?
04.05.12 – A player figures out that deleting game data and reinstalling fixes the 1.5 water freeze bug. Bethesda stickies this fix and acts like they figured it out.
05.24.12 – Patch 1.6 and mounted combat is announced. Many features of 1.6 reduce game bloat and fix some fundamental flaws in the game.
All of these fixes are listed as ‘for all platforms unless noted.’ Which, aside from kinect stuff, are all the fixes.
07.23.12 – Bethesda announces that PS3 will never get 1.6, and its features will be rolled into patch 1.7.
This is the FIRST official comment regarding 1.6 since it was announced back in May.
Of course, by now we all have seen the following week the DG debacle is announced, and not surprisingly, Bethesda has turned a deaf ear and mute tongue toward the PS3 community – again!
Patch 1.7 was supposed to be submitted to Sony last week, but that has not apparently happend.
Lets also keep in mind that since Skyrim was released they chose to release FONV:Ultimate edition -> http://youtu.be/e3gWvxHWFuI. A game well documented as broken – even by its lead developer Josh Sawyer.
And now with Dawnguard they care about the PS3 experience? Its a blatant lie.
They are without a doubt the worst company releasing titles on PS3 and frankly I’m so pissed I will never buy another from Bethesda, Zenimax or any company that Todd Howard, Peet Hines, Nick Breckon or if we ever learn who that twit GStaff on their forums is, I’ll avoid them all for the rest of their careers.
What is most apalling to me now is the debacle gets to continue. Where the hell is Sony in this? Are they EVER going to take up for their fan base? Either block Beth’s releases for beat them about the head and face with a blunt object until they FIX their games.
Look at this sequence of events:
(Pre release)
Lots of hype about the game, of course, but specifically Pete Hines is out pubicly declaring how the platforms all have a great parity – including framerate, fidelity and visuals.
Todd Howard is saying they are using a ‘whole new engine’ pre-release.
11.11.11 – Knowingly released Skyrim in a BROKEN state. Todd Howard admitted this on Kotaku
(1.2 and 1.3 were both released but did nothing for the major problems on the PS3)
02.09.12
PS3 got zilch support until four months later when 1.4 was released. First time many players could play the game without insane FPS drops.
03.20.12 – Patch 1.5 is available on PSN. Cause game breaking freeze EVERY time the player enters water.
Are you effing kidding me? The water effect was a ‘new feature’ right?
04.05.12 – A player figures out that deleting game data and reinstalling fixes the 1.5 water freeze bug. Bethesda stickies this fix and acts like they figured it out.
05.24.12 – Patch 1.6 and mounted combat is announced. Many features of 1.6 reduce game bloat and fix some fundamental flaws in the game.
All of these fixes are listed as ‘for all platforms unless noted.’ Which, aside from kinect stuff, are all the fixes.
07.23.12 – Bethesda announces that PS3 will never get 1.6, and its features will be rolled into patch 1.7.
This is the FIRST official comment regarding 1.6 since it was announced back in May.
Of course, by now we all have seen the following week the DG debacle is announced, and not surprisingly, Bethesda has turned a deaf ear and mute tongue toward the PS3 community – again!
Patch 1.7 was supposed to be submitted to Sony last week, but that has not apparently happend.
Lets also keep in mind that since Skyrim was released they chose to release FONV:Ultimate edition -> http://youtu.be/e3gWvxHWFuI. A game well documented as broken – even by its lead developer Josh Sawyer.
And now with Dawnguard they care about the PS3 experience? Its a blatant lie.
They are without a doubt the worst company releasing titles on PS3 and frankly I’m so pissed I will never buy another from Bethesda, Zenimax or any company that Todd Howard, Peet Hines, Nick Breckon or if we ever learn who that twit GStaff on their forums is, I’ll avoid them all for the rest of their careers.
What is most apalling to me now is the debacle gets to continue. Where the hell is Sony in this? Are they EVER going to take up for their fan base? Either block Beth’s releases for beat them about the head and face with a blunt object until they FIX their games.
How much you wanna bet Dawngaurd on ps3 will still have major issues when it comes out.
To everyone saying either to just wait and it will turn out good or it’s not their fault it’s difficult to code the ps3 remember this. It’s their job and they are professionals and they should be able to easily code the ps3 because they got the job. Also they should have some people working on different platforms instead of (what it seems like) everyone working on pc and Xbox so Bethesda get you’re act together and GIVE OUR WELL DESERVED DLC