Slow loading times in video games are among the few things that can irritate a player when they decide to enjoy their favorite games. While these slow load times can be remedied by upgrading your system hardware and how you use your device, sometimes the games are just significantly slow depending on various factors. However, video game load times have improved dramatically over the years with upgrades in computers (consoles and smartphones) processing power, storage space, and other technologies.
Why Some Games Take Long to Load
While video games keep getting better in graphics and gameplay, loading times are still a major concern for impatient gamers. At times, the loading speeds are so bad that the developers have to beat them into submission with numerous post-release patches. That makes most gamers wonder whether more expensive and powerful rigs will ever be strong enough to eliminate the waiting time.
According to leading programmers, some games load slowly as players are continually demanding more stuff on their screens, but the hardware that loads and stores these elements isn’t improving at the same pace. For instance, CPU and GPU performance is increasing at a faster rate than hard drive read speed.
According to leading video game developer William Armstrong, hard drives are limited by the laws of physics as the writing/reading process involves converting pure electrons to physical apparatus. That’s considerably slower than pure circuitry as nothing can move faster than light. However, the rise of SSD has considerably improved the loading speeds more than hard drives were a decade ago.
Are Instant Loading Speeds For Games Possible?
While you don’t need to worry about loading times with online betting South Africa using Betway, lots of competitive gamers enjoy games with reduced gaming time. That’s why lots of video game developers are constantly upgrading their games to cut down the loading time from a few minutes to several seconds to create better gaming and gambling experience like you get when using the Betway platform.
Over a decade ago, hard drives with 5400 RPM (rotation per minute) were the standard, but they’ve been phased out with 7200 RPM drives today. However, that only boosts the read performance by 33% and gamers are still looking for ways to further cut the load times.
Modern console & gaming PC developers are switching to solid-state drives (SSD), which offer significantly improved read performance, but at higher costs per GB. However, they’re still trying to fight against the dramatic increase in-game data with emerging technologies like VR and AI continually being a major part of the gaming market.
Despite the discrepancy in advancements between hard drive speeds and data size, video games load times have drastically improved. That’s because developers are devising all sorts of techniques to minimize or hide the load times.
For instance, a programmer hit the headlines in 2021 after managing to shave almost 70% of the average load time of GTA Online using a custom code. That shows that instant loading times in video games will soon become a reality in the future, although it requires several improvements in gaming software development and hardware.
