BioWare addresses DA PS3 bonus issue

By Tom Bramwell Published 1 December, 2009

Update: Now with UK details.

Update: EA UK has told us that anyone affected over here should contact EA Customer Support on 0870 2432435 (Monday to Friday 9am-9pm) or go to support.electronicarts.co.uk.

Original story: BioWare has advised anybody having problems with the bonus disc for the PS3 Collector's Edition of Dragon Age to get in touch.

The problem, according to a thread on the official forum, is that the soundtrack provided as part of the bundle is in MP3 format, but the disc it's on is a Blu-ray.

PS3s won't play back MP3s stored on a Blu-ray, while most PC owners don't have a Blu-ray drive so they can't get at the content there either.

It's particularly galling for some fans because the packaging of the special edition refers to a "Bonus DVD", not a Blu-ray, as you can see on GAME's website.

Anyway, Kotaku quotes a BioWare spokesperson saying that PS3 owners should make contact via help.dragonage.com.

Apparently affected customers are being given access to the bonus content on PC using EA Downloader.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (17) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 2 years ago

    So... erm... don't the people that put these bonus collector's editions together actually... like... check that the contents and stuff in them actually work?!?!?

  • ocmerius #2 2 years ago

    @Darren

    Why shoould you check? It's a PS3, it can do ANYTHING. Right?

  • DirtyDubs #3 2 years ago

    Cant believe that such a basic mistake was made. A DVD or CD would have to be cheaper to produce too so why was a B.Ray used? Every PS3 owner doesn't have a PC and a few will feel annoyed about this error so I expect that there will be a good few returns for the standard version.

  • LiveForever #4 2 years ago

    What a waste of a blueray disk. Lol

  • chrisno21 #5 2 years ago

    I haven't even tried the second disc yet - guess it's good to know of the problem before I try it and get frustrated.

  • NorUraeus #6 2 years ago

    I don't have a blu-ray burner so I can test, but I don't really believe the claim that the PS3 can't play mp3 files of the blu-ray drive. I feel pretty convinced that if I burned a blu-ray as a normal data storage disc, and put some mp3 files into a 'Music' folder like I need to do for penndrives etc., it would work. My guess here would be that Bioware dumped the files into a folder with a different name or some such.
    Edited by 1 at 02/12/09 @ 14:47

  • jonbwfc #7 2 years ago

    OK, so it won't play the MP3's off the bluray - why not just copy them off the bluray onto the PS3's HDD and play them from there?

  • Murton #8 2 years ago

    This raises two interesting questions which I am going to offer possible answers.

    Q: why did no-one at Bioware or EA think to test the disc before it was shipped
    A: perhaps the test version works and something went wrong with the master copy that was sent for mass production. It certainly wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened recently. The Xbox/PC Pitt DLC for Failout 3 and the Assassin's Creed Bloodlines download spring to mind.

    Q: why wouldn't the PS3 play MP3s from the Blu-Ray drive?
    A: I don't believe that it wouldn't. I agree with NoUraeus and think that what actually happened is that the file path doesn't conform to the PS3 standard and therefore cannot be seen by the PS3 OS. Alternatively the MP3s could be using an unsupported codec resulting in them being non-playable.

    It is pretty much a waste of a Blu-Ray disc though, I mean how big can the soundtrack possibly be? And if you wanted to put it on a Blu-Ray "because you can" then why not put it on the same disc as the game. The fact that the game is out on 360 at all shows that there's plenty of unused space on the game disc so why not put some extra features on there instead of printing a second disc, it would be much cheaper to produce that way and lower production costs = more profits.

  • Thedni #9 2 years ago

    I don't see why this is such an issue in all honesty.

    The soundtrack isn't supposed to be played on the console. If you follow the menu's on the blu-ray/DVD the soundtrack button tells you to stick it into a PC. If you don't have a Blu-ray player in your PC then time to upgrade I guess.

    That said, it's a great soundtrack.

  • Darren #10 2 years ago

    @Thedni - And you don't think it's kind of bizarre that these MP3s can't be played on... you know... a PS3, the platform that game came for?

    The PS3 *can* play MP3s from the hard drive, from CDs, from USB memory stick and via streaming so all that was needed was a menu option on the BD to copy the files to the XMB's Music section. Making a PS3 owner have to put the disc into a PC in order to listen to the MP3 files when the PS3 already has a BD drive is just so amazingly stupid that... well... I don't know what else to say really... except for... we all know that every PS3 owner also has a PC with a BD drive... right? ;)

    (I own a PC and it doesn't have a BD drive but then I own two BD players already and since PC games don't come on BD there's absolutely no point in installing one IMO)

  • Thedni #11 2 years ago

    @Darren - I have the 360 version on a DVD. Its a DVD first and formost with a folder containing soundtrack within it. I can't access the sound track straight up on my 360 either. I can see that it may have been a little shortsighted for the PS3 edition to be on blu-ray disk but as far as I'm aware it was never intended to have been read from the console.

  • Darren #12 2 years ago

    @Thedni - I still consider it a stupid oversight whatever the intention. There's no reason why the soundtrack could not be listened to from a DVD/BD menu or had an option to copy the files to the HDD where it could be listened to.

    I mean this disc was included with a CONSOLE game and, therefore, should NOT require access to a PC in order to use it. At least with the 360 version you can play it on most modern PCs since DVD is standard now but assuming people have access to a PC BD drive for the PS3 version is just staggeringly dumb!

  • chrisola #13 2 years ago

    Whats wrong with the good old CD?

    Soundtracks = CD's!

  • Darren #14 2 years ago

    I'd just come back here to post: "Why not on CD?"... and I see chrisola has beat me to it!

  • davisorle #15 2 years ago

    lmao. What a retarded issue, really. I do feel bad for the holders of that edition though. Hope they end up sutisfied with the options given through contacting them.

  • kangarootoo #16 2 years ago

    @NorUraeus

    Your entire post seems to be based on not believing, despite not testing it yourself, something that is not even remotely in dispute by anyone except yourself.

    And then as an alternative, you offer an entirely different but equally stupid (stupid of them, not you) reason, for the problem. A reason that you have equally not tested.


    Why, why oh why, on earth, would they lie about this? The proposed problem hardly makes them look any better than if they had mislabelled a folder does it. I simply don't get where your motivation comes from from suspecting foul play here. Conspiracy theory for the sake of it?
    Edited by 1 at 01/12/09 @ 17:34

  • NorUraeus #17 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo: suspecting foul play? I am not suspecting foul play, just silliness. Foul play would mean someone had malign intentions, while my theory is just a combination of miscommunication and lack of technical know how.

    True, I can't test, but the fact that I can and have tried playing music from just about every other possible storage medium known to man, including memory cards, penndrives, USB harddrives and DVDs ,as long as I place the music in the right folder, makes me very suspicious of a claim that it is impossible to play music from a blu-ray disc on the PS3. If someone who got a blu-ray burner, makes a data disc with a Music directory where they put an mp3 file tell me that doesn't work I will not argue, but until that happens I am very sceptical about that being the situation.