I read with interest the Reader’s Feature on five things the PlayStation 5 must improve on and felt they overlooked one major issue which does need to be addressed. It’s an issue that has been, for me, one of the more negative experiences of using a PlayStation 4 and that is download speeds: these… are… very… slow.
To say it has been a source of great frustration is an understatement. To watch a file which my PC can download in a matter of minutes apparently take five sodding hours on a standard PlayStation 4 is borderline unacceptable. Particularly as consoles are increasingly moving away from physical copies of games.
A quick Google search tells me I’m not alone in this and the issue has been well documented for years. I have tried most of the tricks I’ve read online to try to improve the speed, largely to no effect. It would be a situation I could accept if it was the result of hardware issues like using a 56K dial-up modem but not when, as I understand, it is the result of the imposition of artificial limitations.
Undoubtedly some responses will be to download games or updates overnight. This is one solution, though in my view little more than a sticking plaster. Overnight downloads require a degree of planning, an option that is not always available to a family man of a certain age. Coming home from work to try to play a game, or use an application, and being prevented from doing so until a multi-hour update has finished is not what I bought a console for.
I don’t know if this issue has been resolved on a PS4 Pro or will be on the PlayStation 5 (there’s some vague implication it might be), but if not, then for me any debate about the technical merits of the PlayStation 5 is partially negated by a download system that harks back to the age of typewriters.
Paul Williams
