Bethesda says Skyrim: Dawnguard may not come to PS3 due to technical issues

Bethesda gave an update on the PlayStation version of Skyrim DLC Dawnguard on Friday and the outlook isn't good.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim players on PlayStation 3 may need to accept an unpleasant truth in the near future: The game you have is the only game you get. Your Dragonborn may not ever get to build a house or start a family with Hearthfire. The vampires already hanging out in the caves of your Skyrim are the only vampires you’ll get to fight or turn into, because expansion Dawnguard may not ever come to the PS3.

Bethesda’s been quiet about Dawnguard’s release beyond the Xbox 360 version that came out in July, and it turns out that the company wasn’t just being cagey. Dawnguard is proving a sticky wicket to fit into Sony’s console. In a post on Bethesda’s official forums the developer explained that technical issues are preventing  the expansion from running properly on PS3.

“Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you’re talking about sizable content like Dawnguard,” reads the statement, “We have tried a number of things, but nonw of solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. The PS3 is a powerful system, and we’re working hard to deliver the content you guys want. Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we’ve been working on either, so this issue of adding content gets even more complicated.”

“This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.”

Back on Jul. 30, Bethesda hit Twitter to explain that no announcement of Dawnguard for other platforms had been made but that new content like mounted combat would come to PS3 with Skyrim patch 1.7.

Dawnguard’s problems on PlayStation 3 are none too surprising. When the game released last November, the PlayStation 3 version was plagued by frequent game crashes and crippling slowdown. The root of the problem is the way Skyrim games were saved on the console. Save files could grow to over 6MB as play time extended in the game. While patches for the game have eased those problems, the addition of Dawnguard no doubt exacerbates the original problem.

Bethesda has always had problems getting its games to run on the PlayStation 3. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all struggled as ports. That Bethesda is working hard to remedy these issues on the platform at all is impressive though. The game’s already sold well on the platform, more than 4 million copies worldwide, far more than the superior PC edition.