Skyrim's PS3 Lag Gets A Patch This Month

Is a fix finally on the way for Skyrim's PlayStation 3 lag? Bethesda says yes.

It's been almost exactly two months since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hit the PS3, and throughout that time fans have complained loudly and in great numbers that the game is saddled with massive lag. Particularly once a player's save file grows larger than 6MB. Unfortunately that usually occurs once the game has been played for over 20 hours, leaving the game's owner irrevocably addicted to the excellent title and doomed to suffer glumly through its ever-increasing lag.

Luckily, it seems that Bethesda Softworks has a fix in the works.

When asked, point-blank, what the company had planned for the PlayStation 3 lag, the official Bethesda Twitter feed responded by saying that this month's patch (version 1.4, for those keeping score at home) would address the problem.

Good news, right? Yes, but it should also be remembered that Bethesda has promised PS3 lag fixes in both of the past two Skyrim patches. Granted, each patch did improve the issue, but to date PlayStation 3 owners are still awaiting a definitive fix for the problem.

Will 1.4 be that fix? Dunno. We don't even really know when the patch will be released, outside of the nebulous promise that it's coming sometime this month.

As someone who owns the PS3 version of Skyrim, I want to believe that Bethesda has a crack team of codemonkeys working on this issue 24/7, but as a cynical games journalist I realize that this problem isn't likely to be the highest priority for the company.

If I had to guess I'd place it somewhere above "look at cute kitty pictures on the 'net" and "relax in kiddie pool full of gold coins."