Ah, I remember Smackdown Vs. Raw 2006 for PSP. It was hell! All the other games was descent for me. I hope the new games (Crisis Core) will have short load times.

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I think this is a joke. They are counting everything until actual gameplay as load times. Most of the games I've picked up have zero noticable load times. For example, I think Tekken has a load at the beginning for less than ten seconds, and that's it.

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I understand that the DS is faster but, has someone considered how much data has to load a DS for "Super Mario" and the PSP for "Smackdown" or "GTA"?
There are some differences..

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Actually, anybody who checks the actual load times will see how much those numbers have been exaggerated... This is Nintendo-sponsored propaganda, nothing more.

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i think that untold legends 1 loadtime is the reason i microwaved it

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Most load times aren't a big deal. It depends as much on the developer and type of game as it does on the inherent load times of the media itself.

I do remember not liking Wipeout for that very reason, though - it just took too damned long to load for a game that had such a fast pace.

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The test is based on time from initial poweron til the game initiates (either control is given to the player, or the starting cutscene opens up). Menus were skipped through at high speed.

Depends on the game, and how the loadtime is set up. I'm more willing to deal with a loadtime of doom on an RPG than an action game, and on a game with regular sections than one were the loadup feels unnatural or breaks the pace.

And I hate (hate) splash screens that can't be skipped through. Such a waste.

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Regarding 'how much data' - who cares? If a portable game on one system takes ~30 seconds to 'wake up' and the other system is 'instant on' ... one *is* a portable system and the other is NOT.

30 second wake-ups an exaggeration? Madden 07, LEGO Star Wars, Godfather.

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Your forgeting about Ridge Racer. Nothing takes more than 10 seconds to load in that game. You can pop in the game press the x button a few times and be racing 30 seconds after you pop in the UMD.

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I agree, i've avoided buying Burnout for psp simply because the load times are abomniable...

on my ps2 the burnout series has frustratingly long load times, especially burnout 3, and loads unnessecarily... I blame EA, they don't bother porting / programming stuff properly

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Where are the DS title load times? Hurts the legitimacy of the test when they only provide 1/2 the data.

Obviously DS will load faster given that it's cartridge based, but since you only need to load the game once on the PSP and can then use hibernate, who cares?

Loading an iso off the memory stick also solves the "problem".

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Cartridge vs. Mini DVD...obviously cartridge will have faster loading times if any at all.

How come good games have faster loading time vs half assed ports?

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One game I hate the loading on is Micro Machines V4: You play a race (and of course lose) then you want to play it again... the *same* track... and you have to wait 30+ seconds for it to load all over again. That's frustrating & unnecessary. It really shows the lack of care in design as you mentioned in the article. So those kinds of loading times are what frustrates me.

I was playing Star Wars Battlefront II on PSP quite a bit. And the loading times are long, but I was accustomed to loading cause I also have it on (original) Xbox... what can I say, I love Battlefront II.... but then I started playing the Xbox version again & realized how short the load times were, compared to the PSP. But it's not really fair to compare the power of a home console to a handheld.

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Who cares , do you remember games like Syphonfilter on the PSone ??? They where long loading times there , but Ive enjoyed it . Alos , they schould have made 2 categories : until the menu , and until the game , I allways spend some time in the menu . Also games like Daxter , Tekken DR and Medieval R dont have long loadtimes at all ( yeah , I like Medieval ) .

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They obviously didn't test NBA '06 and NBA '07. We've worked hard to get reasonable load times. --Steve

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@Steve - Nice to see a dev showing their face around here. ;)

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I try to make sure I have something handy to do while the load times are happening, especially since I can actually do something off of the couch on a portable system. Pfff! What kind of fanboys are you?

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This is a complete lie. Like what Player1 said, they count everything until actual gameplay as loading time. Since the UMD is a disc format instead of a flash format, you will have slower loading times than with flash, but some of those load times are way too high. They say that with Daxter, you have 80 seconds of loading time. Bull. I have Daxter, and there are absolutely NO noticable loading times throughout most of the game. The only time there are loading times is when you're first loading the game and in between teleportations, and even those don't even come close to 80 seconds.

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boo hoo hoo... so lets see, its a conspiracy, everything was fabricated, and the loadtimes are in actuality, zero.

got it.

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