How? Well, it’s simple: I loaded each game fresh from the LiveArea and chose the quickest route to starting a quick game of each.
I also, for the purpose of trying to inject a bit of daft humour, timed how long it would take to make a sandwich. A simple one, mind, none of your fancy toasted Subway nonsense.
Bread, butter, cheese and a bit of ham. For the sake of arguement (and so I don’t need to worry about horrible mathematics) it takes about a minute. Sixty seconds.
Thus, utilising a dash of approximation, it’s possible to compare Vita’s loading times with that of sandwich production. Could one rustle up a tasty treat in the time it takes WipEout 2048 to load?
The results, as people like to say when they do stuff like this, may surprise you…
Reality Fighters
Sony’s AR-powered scrapper takes 34 seconds to get to the start screen, another 33 to get past all the menus and pick your fighters, and then just 8 to start the actual fight. That’s a total of 75 seconds, well over a sandwich but probably not enough to really get started on the next one.
Unit 13
Zipper’s brilliant third person tactical shooter takes 47 seconds to get to the title screen, and then jumping into a level (we picked ‘level 5’ at random) took 31 seconds. That’s 78 seconds, not bad at all, and restarts are instant if you die or mess up.
WipEout 2048
Much has been made of Sony Liverpool’s future racer and its loading times – so here’s the truth. 62 seconds to get to the main menu, and 56 to load the first single player event. So, that’s 118 seconds, almost two whole sandwiches. Is it worth it when you start the game? Of course. And restarting an event is much, much quicker – about 10 seconds.
Uncharted Golden Abyss
Drake’s first (chronologically at least) adventure takes 40 seconds to get to the level select screen, and just 31 to actually gain control after skipping as much of the movie as we could, starting the game from the very beginning on ‘normal’. 71 seconds, then, although a movie normally hides some of this – that’s the case for most of Uncharted and load times are either zero or tiny between levels. Impressive.
Everybody’s Golf 6
I love this game, despite the relatively low-resolution display. It takes 35 seconds to gain control, and jumping into the very first tournament takes another 21 seconds of loading. How long in total, then? 56 seconds, so although there’s a couple of seconds between holes, it’s still up and running quicker than you can slap that last slice of bread on top.
ModNation Racers
The PS3 version famously suffered from terrible load times, but how does the Vita one stack up? Much better. It took us 43 seconds to get to the Start screen, another 14 for the hub to load up so we could pick a track, and then the track selection took 38 seconds (this was the first track, in single race). 95 seconds in total then – not nearly as bad as the PS3 version.
Little Deviants
It takes a while to get to the menu (even skipping the movie) – 49 seconds, but the first minigame loaded up in just 8 seconds. That’s pretty speedy once you’re up and running then, clocking in at just 57 seconds – three whole seconds shy of a perfect sandwich.
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
Capcom’s fighter is a really solid Vita launch title, and definitely one for fans of the genre. It takes 64 seconds for it to first load, though, another 15 to get to the Arcade mode menu and then 23 before you can pick your fighters. Once you’ve done this it’s quick, but until then? 102 seconds. I’ll let you figure out the analogy.
Ridge Racer:
It might only have three tracks but I still think Ridge Racer’s pretty good. Regardless, it takes 30 seconds to get to the ‘start’ screen but another 10 before the menu loads. Jumping into a Spot Race on Harborline 765 takes another 19 seconds, taking the total up to 59 seconds. A second off a sandwich then, but who’s counting?
Oh, we are.
Notes:
- This isn’t meant to be terribly scientific or conclusive – I only tested each game once and the timings were approximate.
- No other apps were running on the Vita.
- All games ran off memory card, apart from Ridge Racer which was a physical purchase.
- All games were UK review code – and some elements of each may be subject to change before release – apart from Ridge Racer which was a Japanese import. Ridge Racer was running off the latest patch.
- WipEout 2048 is getting a patch to improve load times.
- All movies and splash screens were skipped were possible.
- The Vita was allowed to sign into the PSN (it doesn’t keep a persistent connection) when required on loading each game.
- The Vita was running firmware 1.60, the latest at the time of this experiment.
- UMvC3 does loads of Trophy checking and DLC checking on first boot – this was cancelled as soon as we were able.
Mickey2010
Awesome article im suprised that Wipouts loadtimes are 20 seconds faster than modnations as i was told that had the worst load times on PS3 and On the Vita
nofi
Wipeout takes longer to load.
Winkle
Can I ask when your article about unit 13 is going to appear Nofi?
nofi
About three weeks, I think.
job
acceptable .
Youles
Uncharted seems impressive given how amazing the game looks.
Ouninpohja
Ah well never mind.
After spending the last couple of months and god knows how many hours playing Skyrim those times will be a breeze! :)
Michael
Superb article :-)
teflon
Very interesting. I’m slightly disappointed with these load times, actually.
Against an iPhone 4S, where Shadowgun has me in game after 30 seconds, Rage after less than 10 (!), Real Racing 2 on 30 seconds and Infinity Blade also around the 30 second mark.
I would’ve expected them to be a little bit closer to those times, really. I’m sure it won’t be so bad when it’s in my hands, but staring at load screens is never much fun.
Youles
New consoles always promise faster loading times, but since the games get larger or more complicated (sorry, I’m no technical expert), they never seem to improve really. I can only imagine they compare the times on new machines, with old games!
teflon
Well kind of. Rage, Real Racing and Infinity Blade are all over 1GB in size. That’s not too far off Vita game sizes, and when you account for game length and depth, it can’t be too far off being equivalent.
So that really brings us to the data transfer speeds which the Vita gets to play with from memory cards, compared to the iPhone’s on board flash memory. I can’t believe that decompression of assets would be a factor, or RAM/VRAM bandwidth. This can only logically sit on the back of the memory stick and game cartridge read speeds.
Youles
I see. The iPhone is quite impressive then really, or the Vita isn’t. :/
yogh_wayne
But you won’t stare at a loading screen – you’ll be making sandwiches :)
Tuffcub
Now im hungry
FalconRedux
Great idea for an article, nice one!
kjkg
You realise someone is going to complain about this and say “another site bashing the Vita, affecting the Japenese sales.”
Moshbag
This article is total BS – no salad? mayonnaise? what kind of bread?
Tuffcub
Salad? You do know where Alex lives, right? I’m suprised he picked making a sandwhich rather than timing how long it takes to deep fry a packet of Skittles.
kjkg
Ah the classic Glasgow Deep fried mars bar. Do you know, I’ve lived here all my life and the ONLY place I’ve seen this advertised as being sold was in Newcastle.
I now want a chippy!
KeRaSh
Knowing it will probably stop my heart from beating… I have a feeling that I have to at least try it…
Moshbag
I was not aware of his salad-free location, perhaps he should have assessed how many Wipeout races he could squeeze in on his ambulance ride to triple heart bypass surgery.
yogdog
I laughed so hard at this conversation :D
tonyyeb
Only on TSA.