Next Gen console's long loading times

For those who have been playing next-gen consoles, do you notice that loading times seem to take a lot longer than the games of previous gen? Games such as Killer Instinct and the Evolve Alpha had some strangely long loading screens. I was surprised when I first got Killer Instinct and noticed that it took around 10-15 seconds to load a match; in comparison, Street Fighter 4 on the 360 seems to load almost instantly. Evolve just took really long to load, anywhere from 60-120 seconds just to get a match started.

I also watched the video of IGN playing the Master Chief Collection, and it seems like the remastered maps take quite a bit longer to load in multiplayer. I remember playing Halo CE on the xbox and the multiplayer matches would load within about 3 seconds.

I understand that the higher res textures take a lot longer to load, but I assumed that the extra power in the next-gen systems would compensate. Does anyone else notice any long loading screens in other next-gen games? (Note: I also have a PS4, but the only game I've played on it was The Last of Us)

Well Evolve is an alpha trial. Of course it takes forever, it isn't finished.

MS really needs to sort out XB1 installs. I'm fearing Halo's install + update so much. Will take hours and I have a decent connection.

Xbone is by far the slowest by a large margin when it comes to installing games. It's worse than the old PS3, which was a joke to many last gen for installing games, but the Xbone install times are worse. I'm not sure how that happened coming from Xbox who had designed the easy breezy 360.

The Xbone loading and installing and updating is really poor in comparison to the 360, PS3, and especially PS4. It's possible you should conduct more tests on both your units (Xbone/PS4) before assuming and directing problems to next gen consoles, but basically commenting on your experiences with only the Xbone.

Remember too, you are comparing 1st generation software on the Xbone/PS4 to much later generation PS360 games where devs had YEARS to tweak their engines and cut down loading times and the like.

This question would make more sense to ask in three-four years, IF by that time we still notice issues in comparison to PS360.

I was reviewing the tech specs of the 360 and Xbox one to see what would cause the Xbox one to be slower at loading games. The Xbox one has more powerful hardware than the 360 but the 360 has more bandwidth than the Xbox one. I will tell you why that would cause a slowdown between the 2 systems if you don't know. Think of bandwidth as data traveling on a highway and the 360's highway has 6 lanes and the Xbox one has 2. The Xbox one's data is coming in slower than the 360's data so it can get you playing your game faster even thou the Xbox one's processors are more powerful. I hope this helps you out.

When Dead or Alive 5 Last Round comes out next year you'l have a more accurate comparison since its a cross gen game.

I know on my 360 DoA5 takes about 5 seconds to load the 1st match, but after that it loads consecutive matches intantaneously, I'm guessing it preloads them in the background.

I'm not sure what you mean by more bandwidth? The main reason you'd see slower load times with newer games is larger files and developers haven't had enough experience to fine tune their libraries. It's easier to load everything and go compared to load just enough to start and load more as the game is running. If you get the algorithm wrong, then you end up with lag waiting on the disk which annoys people more than waiting longer for the initial load.

High res textures and bigger game files. Think of it this way a 360 game 8gig on disk, now games of today have bloated to 50gigs. That alone means load times will be slowed down. Once developers learn to optimize The systems load times will hopefully improve. On ps3/360 developers could read off the disk and hdd and get optimal load times. On the ps4/xb1 they are limited to the cheap hdd built-in the systems. You can improve your load times by installing a sshd yourself.

I have downloaded games and updated on the ps4, and they do take noticeably longer than the xbox one. As for loading screens, I have yet to purchase a next-gen game on the console to test, but you're right, I shouldn't assume that loading screens take just as long.

As for your comment about comparing 1st gen software with later gen software: I also made a comparison between Halo MCC and Halo CE. Halo CE would load maps almost instantly (3 seconds on the original xbox), but from what I saw in the Halo MCC (remamastered maps) was that it took a lot longer to load.

You downloaded the exact same games on both PS4 and Xbone to do a proper comparison test? You made sure that both files were roughly the same sizes (for example 7GB for PS4 and 7 GB for Xbone) to make sure to do a proper test? That doesn't seem likely because your results are the exact opposite of the industry results, consumer results, and critics comparison results. Quite literally what you posted is the opposite of the tests already conducted and posted across the interwebs coming up on a year now. No offense, but you seem to be flying blind. Don't just take my word for it, You can even go to Youtube and check it out as there is hundreds of vids on the topic. I'll post just one of hundreds of videos at your disposal. I myself have both machines and I have also conducted tests and came to the same industry wide conclusions after doing proper tests (friends brought over copies, etc) which you can view below in a proper test using the same games on both machines.

As far as MasterChief Collection, those were games designed on other platforms and then ported to the Xbone. Already that's a problem in doing a proper and fair comparison. These Halo games in the collection were optimized on other machines years ago. They weren't designed for Xbone. A better comparison would be Halo 5 (designed for Xbone) to Halo 3 (designed for 360) or Halo 1 (designed for Xbox 1).

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One other thing. Here's a picture and link you may find interesting.

The picture is about Game Install/Load times between the Xbone and PS4.

I'm not too tech savvy when it comes to talking about the functions of the gpu/cpu etc... but I understand a bit. Where did you find that the xbox one has less bandwidth than its predecessor? I found an article that claimed the "embedded memory bandwidth" for the xbox one is 102GBs vs 32GBs on the 360. While the "system memory bandwidth" is 68.3GBs on the One vs 22.4GBs on the 360. Is there another bandwidth calculation that I'm missing?

@SolidTyHonestly, no. I never tried testing both consoles with a controlled experiment. Personally, I wouldn't purchase (or download for free) two copies of the same game for the sake of comparing speeds of two different consoles. I'm basing my evaluation simply off of my experience; however the difference in speed may be more due to the difference in wi-fi connection rather than the speed of either console's network. My Xbox One and PS4 are both connected via wi-fi, but the Xbox One is connected to the 5Ghz band while the PS4 is connected to the 2.4Ghz band. simply because the PS4 doesn't even recognize the 5Ghz band. (both consoles are in the same location)

I'll take your word (as well as the many people who tested the speeds) that the xbox one is slower at downloading and updating when tested without variables. But what I experience at home is completely different, because the PS4's wi-fi connection doesn't accept my 5Ghz band.

I'm rocking the ASUS AC68U Dual Band 801.11AC (top rated) gigabit router and I also have 5Ghz//2.4Ghz to toggle. I feel ya, man. Happy gaming.

All I can say is in this PS4/Xbone gen just started and right now we are seeing an unprecedented and colossal number of last generation ports and cross gen multiplats. Games designed for PS360 in mind.

The real testwill be for games designed solely for Xbone/PS4, none of this PS360 cross gen madness (COD, AC, etc) that is quite frankly holding back the newer generation consoles. When a number of those games release and we have a good library of games for Xbone/PS4 only games (GeoW4, God of War 4, Halo 5, Uncharted 4, The Order, Quantum, Batman Arkham Knight, Witcher 3, etc) then it would be best to compare out experiences to the PS360 gen with regards to your question. Right now, it's hard to get a bead on the answer with so many games designed for the lowest common denominator (PS360) and simply ported up to he newer machines.

I looked on Wikipedia for both systems. I must have got the specs mixed up when I was typing. I was really tired when I did the post. I got the two embedded memory bandwidths mixed up. Sorry about that but now that I am doing this in the early evening, I have been reading your post and yes wi-fi connections can have an effect on download speeds if that is what the original poster is using. I did find one thing the 360 has over the Xbox one. It has an L1 cache and L2 cache. If you don't know what that is, it is memory that is very physical close to the CPU. They store data so the system doesn't have to keep getting the data from the HDD or disk. It saves a lot of time.

Memory speed is irrelevant to load and install times. Computers are always I/O bound in those cases and the alleged PS4 load times require divine intervention as the I/O devices aren't that fast. It's all marketing fiction aimed at the non-technical.

@SolidTy: I'm a little confused here, I thought the OP was about loading times, not install times. I know that install times take longer on Xbox One compared to the competition, but I've yet to hear anything about loading times being longer on Xbox One. Even the link you posted clearly states this, and I quote: 'Once the games are fully installed, they take about the same amount of time to boot up on either console'.

As for the OP, yes I did notice loading sometimes took longer than last gen, the first game I noticed this on was Dead Rising 3....but once the game loaded, it was seamless after that. Overall I find it varies from game to game, I think it has gotten better recently and overall I don't feel loading is more this gen than last gen, it's about the same which is a bit of a disappointment, I thought it would get better this gen. Of course if you get a faster external HDD, you can reduce load times, something I noticed right away when I hooked up my external HDD.

One last thing TC, it certainly does not take me up to 15 seconds load a match in Killer Instinct single player, even with the internal HHD.....online is a different story though, it fluctuates because it is not just loading the game, but also connecting to another player.

Well for me,three day's ago I pre-ordered Call of Duty:AW and Halo:MCC the same day and to my surprise,it took my Xbox Live/internet connection a whooping THREE HOURS each game to download onto my Xbox One.To be honest,I think CoD:AW took 10 or 15 minutes more then Halo,give or take.It took a good part of my day downloading.That'a a bloody long time. :(

@brimmul777:

A long time compared to what? It takes two days to get a disk shipped on Amazon Prime and then you still have to wait for it to load.

Xbox one has a problem with load times. The only way to fix em is to slap an SSD in your system.

@JangoWuzHere

Solid State Drive ? Sure I guess.... But Microsoft can win more hearts by not being a piece of shit company. Granted it hasn't worked for Nintendo... But I stand by my point.

Its a great machine... Can't say the same about the service.

why is this the case though? Why does the X1 have slower bandwidth? and can it be fixed through a patch or is it set in stone?

@ps4hasnogames:

You can't fix what doesn't exist. This is desperate fanboy BS and doesn't make any technical sense at all.

I am sorry. When I was doing this comparison, I was very sleepy and got the specs mixed up. I need to compare the specs of the PS4 and the Xbox One instead of the 360. That would give a better idea of what the problem may be. Also, I am not a Sony fanboy. I have always preferred the Xbox One over the PS4. The Xbox One has the games that I like.

@a55a55inx: Haha, no way PS4 games take longer to download and install. I don't know your connection but I'd say download speeds from XBL/PSN are more or less the same for me but installs from discs are DRAMATICALLY faster on PS4. Last of Us installed 50GB in like 2 minutes where as it took an hour for Sunset Overdrive to install like half that amount of data.

Yeah, I'm not sure how this type of obvious misinformation keeps popping up.

Yeah Xbox One feels a lot slower compared to the PS4 which is a bit of a bummer.

You're right, this topic was about games loading, not about installing; we went a bit off topic. Anyway, I just did a test a few days ago with CoD AW. The 360 version loaded a campaign mission almost twice as fast as the Xbox One version. It's unfortunate, but the next-gen versions of the game look way better than the previous gen, so it's a bit forgivable to wait for better visuals.

Killer instinct doesn't take you 15 seconds to load a match? I remember waiting at least 10 seconds for a match to load, which is quite a bit longer when you compare it to games like Street Fighter 4 or Marvel vs Capcom 3; which load matches almost instantaneously.

The speed of my connection is slower on my PS4 simply because it doesn't accept my 5ghz band from my router, while my xbox One does. Also, I didn't say the Xbox One was faster at installing games, I said it was faster when I experienced downloading and updating on the console; it's probably because of the wi-fi connection. 2 minutes to install 50GBs? That's a bit of an exaggeration. I installed The Last of Us on my PS4 and it took longer than that to completely install, it just allowed you to play while it continued installing.

Again, I'm not saying the Xbox One is faster than the PS4, the main point of this topic was to discuss the longer loading times that I experienced compared to last gen consoles.

@a55a55inx:

Interesting, had no idea there would be that kind of difference, but anyways as I said I did notice that loading times appeared to be longer than previous gen games with certain titles, it seems to vary from game to game.

I just loaded up KI(season 2) and tried to time how long a match would start, and you are correct it took about 10 seconds, the problem is there are animations that happen before the static "loading" per say, so that is when I started timing it, if you start timing it before you likely count more than 10 seconds, so that is where I was coming from with the comment about the 15 seconds, I just didn't feel it was that long(for single player anyways). Hopefully this is something they can improve with software optimizations as well, faster is always better(or at least they could make more interesting loading screens, like for example Lords of the Fallen) .

Ok so I figured I would do a few more tests just to illustrate my point. So I tried it on Sunset Overdrive. From the moment I press A, until the game finishes loading, I timed it at 12 seconds. Now for me, that's not a really long time. I'm not sure how it compares to last gen but I would be surprised if it was significantly less than that. So that's what I was getting at, it is not with all games it seems, but I certainly noticed it on some, especially on launch. Keep in mind, however, that I am using an external HDD that is a little quicker than the internal one, so maybe if we got numbers for the internal one, we could see more how it compares on some recent games with some from last gen, just out of curiosity.

Didn't know that external storage was an option now, good to know! Yeah, 12 seconds isn't long for an open world game, it's totally acceptable. Killer Instinct just seems like a game that should load within 3-5 seconds