Last night, at the GTA V midnight launch, I thought to myself “why didn’t I just pre-order from PSN?”. It would’ve only been £10 more, allowed me to skip queueing in the cold heart of Paisley at that unreasonable hour, and would be ready to go as soon as the clock struck twelve.
It appears as though that’s not the case though – PlayStation fans have taken to the official community forums to air their grievances over the issues plaguing the PSN launch. Firstly, as we reported a few days ago, the pre-load time was moved back a few days. Now, however, it appears some people can’t install the title and others are getting an “unavailable before start date” message.
“I should have known better” says forum user Kotatsu2000, having struggled with installation bugs for both inFamous and Puppeteer before, continuing “I now have an 18gb file sitting on my PS3’s HD which is good for nothing.”
I feel for the guy, he’s avoiding a torrent of swear words as some others seem to be doing and he’s essentially paid £50 for a digital dud. Although downloading again should fix things, it’s still not the smoothest of launches – it might take him days for another 18GB download and he’ll miss out on all the fun.
He’s not alone, with a few others in the thread complaining about the issues. And those issues aren’t alone, either – shadybanks reported in another thread that despite it being almost 2am, he was still receiving an “unavailable before start date” message. Along with this, two others hopped in on the post, one at near 9am this morning, who after 30 minutes on hold had his problem pushed to head office.
If the discs we bought at midnight at GAME didn’t work or if the game boxes weren’t working, there would be an outrage, no matter how few were affected, so this should be a big deal. We’re not ready for an all-digital future just yet, as the PS4 can’t promise to fix all of these errors.
UPDATE:Â Sony have said that users affected by these issues have to wait until 4pm, and then to retry the download. That’s an 18GB download from 4pm today. With PSN’s struggling speeds, I can see a lot of angry people having to wait a long time before they can play the game.
Stefan L
Sony really haven’t covered themselves in glory with this episode.
Starman
This isn’t the first time a psn preorder has launched badly either. For me this is sonys main problem. Brilliant hardware, but they repeatedly mess up on basic (but important) issues.
Youles
I really feel for the people, but I guess it’s similar to when a small percentage of people’s copy will go missing or are late in the post this week. No distributor – be it digital or physical is beyond error (albeit digital distribution should be smoother), lets just hope they resolve the issues fast!
bunimomike
Sickening to see how Sony can have such a half-arsed system when Steam has been handling pre-orders/pre-loads for a good while. Sure, nothing is 100% perfect but Steam’s been very good to me with loading 99% of the title down before launch.
Dazbobaby
No problems for me, pre-load went ok and I managed to play for an hour today.
I think the PS4 will improve matters, with intelligent background downloads and small initial installs to get things going.
Pesico
Pre-loads are great, but I just can’t fathom why Sony can’t do it right. I would have done it all the time if it actually worked.
ClockingGames
I waited for 3 hours in the queue, got home and installed it on my PS3, nothing beats old fashioned installation. You also get something physical which is yours to do with what please and it comes with a Los Santos map and the cover artwork is cool. Never been into digital downloading and never will be. Problems like this should not be happening, take a leaf from my book and next time get the game from store. Hope it works for you all later
Wardy-77-
Im total opposite nearly all my games are digital downloads I love em I do I do I do :D if I had all my games on disk I wouldn’t be able to move for boxes lol
Airiaen
I used be to against digital downloads like you, then Steam took an arrow in the wallet.
matthangzhou
Now I’m back in the UK I’m off digital downloads due to many reasons, price being the main one but guff like this being another. My postie just plonked this through my mailbox. “Why arent’t you playing then you mad man?!” I hear you ask. The 8,486mb game install is why my good chaps. Ahh modern gaming, nothing is simple.
Eldave0
I really hope for Sony’s sake they can sort out issues like this before the PS4. On PS3 at least you can use the “you get what you pay for” argument (at least to some degree), but once they start charging £40 a year for the privilage of using their online service this stuff will need to be spot-on.
TSBonyman
How frustrating, and as others have said i hope we can put these sort of issues behind us when PS4 arrives.