New Vegas patch cripples 360 version?

By Fred Dutton Published 28 April, 2011

Users complain saved games won't load.

The latest patch for Fallout: New Vegas is reportedly causing some Xbox 360 users serious problems.

According to a number of posts on the game's official forum, many players have been unable to load saved games since installing update 1.3 this morning, or are experiencing regular system crashes.

"Great, get the day off, settled down in front of the Xbox to play New Vegas and guess what, it freezes. Thanks Bethesda!" wrote one poster.

"As with everyone else, the new update has wrecked my game, got the warning about losing content and now it won't load up my past saves."

A post on publisher Bethesda's Twitter feed acknowledged the problem and insisted a fix was in the works.

"We're aware some folks are having New Vegas save issues," it read. "We're working with Microsoft on this and should have more information soon."

This isn't the game's first bug-related controversy – the action RPG sequel has been plagued by technical issues since launch.

Reports on Tuesday stated that a number of senior staff at developer Obsidian have been made redundant this week.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (41) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • captain_Carl #1 1 year ago

    Bugs in New Vegas? Well fuck, who'd have thought?

  • FuzzyDuck #2 1 year ago

    This kind of shit is precisely why Bethesda didn't get a cent of my money when it launched, or since.

    Do they have a QA department at all?

  • Vyggo #3 1 year ago

    How can a bug like this go through microsofts patch screening process? Is it only very specific people that have this problem?

  • George-Roper #4 1 year ago

    Do they have a QA department at all?

    Again, comments with negativity levelled against the QA guys. You do realise that they probably have a bug database neck deep in bugs already found, verified and logged but for which management aren't willing to expend any developer time on?

    QA aren't typically the ones to blame when obvious, game crippling bugs are found with updates.

  • Twister27 #5 1 year ago

    Had this problem, just went into memory, found Fallout:NV and deleted the Title 3 update file, next time I loaded the game refused the update and all was okay. Now back playing, obviously signs you out of Live.

  • dancingrob #6 1 year ago

    I was originally intending to buy this game on release, but given the history, my subsequent decision to wait for the inevitable GOTY edition is looking wiser by the day.

  • Kaminari #7 1 year ago

    At least they say they'll fix it.

    BioShock 2 had the very same issue with save games being incompatible with the latest DLC patches, and 2K didn't do a flying shit about it.

  • darkmorgado #8 1 year ago

    Six months from now:

    Dancingrob: I got New Vegas GOTY edition and it bricked my console!

  • orpheus #9 1 year ago

    @FuzzyDuck - New Vegas isn't Bethesda, it's Obsidian.

    /nuff said.

  • dancingrob #10 1 year ago

    @darkmorgado

    definite +1 for you there!

  • HisDudness #11 1 year ago

    Well at least you can play it online!

  • darkmorgado #12 1 year ago

    Since when can you play Fallout online?

  • AmherstWind #13 1 year ago

    @Orpheus - To be fair they're both as bad as each other.

  • Syrette #14 1 year ago

    @Vyggo

    By "patch-screening process" you mean certification, right?

    It would be completely wrong to blame MS. This is an issue which hasn't been seen by all and as such, you'd presume that occasionally some bugs simply won't have occurred during the cert process.

  • technicianTed #15 1 year ago

    The patch got me as well.

    Even when i delete the game update it still screws my savegame up. It seems like deleting the game update is hit and miss for some people.
    Works for some, fails to work for others.

    I was really enjoying the game as well but the patch has left it unplayable for me as none of my saves will load(just freezes when trying to load a savegame in).

  • mortiz666 #16 1 year ago

    The last hour or so of Fallout : New Vegas is a slog, the game's performance slowly gets worse the further you progress until it's crashing every 10 minutes, however overall I enjoyed the game. It seems every patch they release for this game breaks more than it solves.

  • FuzzyDuck #17 1 year ago

    I'm aware that Bethesda didn't develop NV, but they still published it, and they're the ones that get the money from sales,then pay developers, right?

  • Phishfood #18 1 year ago

    So much for testing and Microsoft Certification

  • Eraysor #19 1 year ago

    Mine's working fine!

  • darkmorgado #20 1 year ago

    The last hour or so of Fallout : New Vegas is a slog, the game's performance slowly gets worse the further you progress until it's crashing every 10 minutes

    Sounds like a memory leak.

  • CaptainQuint #21 1 year ago

    I thought a big part of the charm and appeal of Fallout was little 'quirks' like this? Something about how it "adds to the fun"...

  • funkateer #22 1 year ago

    "Again, comments with negativity levelled against the QA guys. You do realise that they probably have a bug database neck deep in bugs already found, verified and logged but for which management aren't willing to expend any developer time on? "

    Exactly. And QA is typically the part of development that has to give way for delays in order to still meet deadlines. Sad but true.

  • funkateer #23 1 year ago

    "I thought a big part of the charm and appeal of Fallout was little 'quirks' like this? Something about how it "adds to the fun"... "

    Haha, I guess my idea of fun differs from yours :)

    I remember occasions where I had to restart because my foot got stuck behind a pebble. Still, Fallout 3 is high up there in my top 10 games this gen.

  • Syrette #24 1 year ago

    @Phishfood

    "So much for testing and Microsoft Certification"

    As I said, no less than 4 posts above yours, this is not a fully reproducible issue. If it's not seen in cert, what do you expect them to do about it?

    I'd be interested to know what you think the certification process involves.

    As for QA, others have pointed out the problems QA face. It's not the QA department's fault. Again it's entirely possible that this issue simply wasn't seen during the QA process.

  • ZizouFC #25 1 year ago

    I hate how casual they are about it...

  • GTFRoundsdown #26 1 year ago

    Fantastic...a great game, £35 quids worth on release and no-one bothered to check it properly? Patching that now doesn't work properly, I played it for a while and found the release version a farce for a full price game, waiting for a patch and now don't fancy loading it up either. Enjoyed the first FO but this is putting me off getting any (surely) follow ups. Only video games can do this shoddy work and seem to get away with it, most other products released not working properly would die a death. This isn't just obsidian guilty of this shoddy workmanship either!!!!!! Rant over......

  • BlinkeredAxis #27 1 year ago

    Darkmorgado sounds about right. It seems to slow down the longer you play. That's on PS3 and 360 version anyway. (don't know what the mobile phone version does lol - see EG article about the 'death of consoles).

    New Vegas fans have had to learn to be patient. Best to wait a few days until the fix. Corrupt saves is a game-breaker. I suggest a second playthrough of Mass Effect 2 just to rub it in to the Obsidian guys. I never saw a bug in ME2, unless you count the awful party dress my (female) Shephard got given during the Kasumi mission. Phwoar!

  • Phantom_Dynamite #28 1 year ago

    I love fall out but I stopped playing at level 14 so they could sort the bugs out, this was in November, im still waiting for a proper fix, now im almost scored to load the game that I might lose 12 hours of game play..

  • Slamhound #29 1 year ago

    The last hour or so of Fallout : New Vegas is a slog, the game's performance slowly gets worse the further you progress until it's crashing every 10 minutes

    Sounds like a memory leak.

    Sounds oddly like the bug that crippled Oblivion for a bit, where every item in the game was being automatically assigned a new reference ID with every frame. If that's the case, then it's going to hit everyone inevitably.

  • mortiz666 #30 1 year ago

    To be honest after playing through Troika's "Vampire The Masquerade : Bloodlines" from start to finish, before the community patches were released, I tend to be forgiving of even relatively severe bugs. They're just the byproduct of the type of conditions developers are working under these days, very few outfits have the resources to polish up their games to a high sheen.

  • darkphoenix #31 1 year ago

    This game has damaged the nice memories I had of Fallout 3.
    Finished it on hardcore survival mode - wich is a joke btw - and I swear the last couple of hours ( main campaign of course ) made me want to eject the disc and throw it out the window.
    Never saw a product so technically buggy and plain unfinished in this generation.

  • Collymilad #32 1 year ago

    Luckily haven't played new vegas yet today.

    Will be avoiding this update.

    I must have been quite lucky as I've only had a few minor bugs/freezes in 50 hours. A few crashes and a few weird dead enemy moments.

    I also got the problem with horrendous load times, and for about 2 minutes the other night the game must have been running at about 3fps. Sorted itself out though. Clearing the system cache seems to solve some issues for me (e.g. the very long loads)
    Edited by Collymilad at 29/04/11 @ 04:10

  • suhawk75 #33 1 year ago

    Well at least it's a good week to bury bad news.

  • slickster #34 1 year ago

    LOL There not still patching this terd after all this time LOL

  • RodHull #35 1 year ago

    Mine seems to be working absolutely fine so it must depend on certain conditions. Can't see why there's focus on the 360 patch though. The PS3 one is so buggy it's completely stopped me from connecting to PSN. Someone tell Sony so they can sort it out immediately.

  • metalangel #36 1 year ago

    This game came out in October last year. Now it's May on Sunday and it's STILL fucked.

  • Syrette #37 1 year ago

    @Ap3xx

    Who is to say they haven't been tested?

    Fact is that some publishers are happy to release titles to the market when they could do with more polish, as they know issues can just be patched later on down the line. New Vegas could have done with a month or two's worth of extra polish, but the publisher probably has strict deadlines for the devs, in order to get the title out when they can maximize revenue.

    Money talks.

  • menage #38 1 year ago

    Not touching anything Obsidian ever again. Bug infested wasteland.

  • TheEnforcer000 #39 1 year ago

    I loaded up a saved game yesterday. Received a message about required dlc being missing... Would I like to continue. Loaded up and everything seemed okay. Btw, I've never had dlc for new Vegas.

  • milki-tea #40 1 year ago

    well. i guess i still wont be playing new vegas, i would HATE to lose my saved games, because i'm certainly not trawling through the game again just so i have a powerful character, not until new DLC has arrived

  • ubergine #41 1 year ago

    Add me to the tally for games broken by the patch. Got a message saying that some downloadable content would no longer work (the only DLC I have is Dead Money...) then the console froze instead of loading.

    So trying to start a new game and see how that goes.