Online Save Game Storage Finally Hits PSN
PlayStation Plus is looking better every day now.
Published: March 9, 2011
Don't be like me. Seriously. You don't want to be that guy who turns on his PS3 one fine morning, ready to make that final run to finish up your Mass Effect 2 playthrough, only to be met with the message "Hard Drive is corrupted, you must format to continue." I might be paraphrasing that sentence a bit, but believe me, it says something like that. You quite literally have no other options at this point other than to say yes, please format my HD and wipe out everything on it. That means goodbye completed Burnout save, goodbye 30+ hours each of Yakuza 3 and Mass Effect 2. So long progress in dozens upon dozens of PSN games. Nice knowing you, Demon's Souls NG++ Blueblood swordsman. You'll all be fondly remembered. Maybe in another year I can bring myself to start these games all over from scratch.
Sure, this could have been prevented by backing up the entire HD and hoping that I kept that really current and it didn't fail on restore like it is so wont to do. But who has time to back up the entire drive every day or so (especially when you have hundreds of gigbytes of data on it)? Not me. God forbid you need a whole new console, since then half those saves won't work anyway.
Now users of PlayStation Plus can go ahead and game free of worry, because with today's PSN update they have introduced Cloud Storage of save games for PSN users (who pay the Plus premium).
With the new feature, PlayStation Plus subscribers can store up to 150MB of PS3 game save data and a maximum of 1000 data files per PlayStation®Network account. “Copy-prohibited save data” is also supported, and all previously backed-up save data may be restored once per 24-hour period. When the new feature launches, most PS3 titles will be compatible with online storage for game saves, and moving forward new titles will have the capability to offer the storage option.
No word yet on which older saves are not in the "most" category, but Rock Band might be a good guess since that one is notorious for not being able to be backed up. Speaking from experience, this is the most invaluable service PS+ has brought to the table in the six months or so since it's inception. I for one will now be purchasing an account, solely for the purpose of never going through what I went through last month. It still stings every time I fire up WipEout HD and see that I'm starting from scratch.
For those who need help figuring out how this works, Sony was kind enough to send over detailed instructions:
To back-up:
1. Select [Game] > [Save Data Utility].
2. Focus on the save data you wish to back up.
3. Open up the option menu using “triangle” and select [Copy].
4. Select [Online Storage] as the destination of back up.
To copy:
1. Select [Game] > [Save Data Utility] > [Online Storage].
2. Focus on the save data you wish to copy.
3. Open up an option menu using “triangle” and select [Copy].
Easy peasy! Much nicer than the archaic hard drive backup option! Do it now, fools, before it is too late!
Sure, this could have been prevented by backing up the entire HD and hoping that I kept that really current and it didn't fail on restore like it is so wont to do. But who has time to back up the entire drive every day or so (especially when you have hundreds of gigbytes of data on it)? Not me. God forbid you need a whole new console, since then half those saves won't work anyway.
Now users of PlayStation Plus can go ahead and game free of worry, because with today's PSN update they have introduced Cloud Storage of save games for PSN users (who pay the Plus premium).
With the new feature, PlayStation Plus subscribers can store up to 150MB of PS3 game save data and a maximum of 1000 data files per PlayStation®Network account. “Copy-prohibited save data” is also supported, and all previously backed-up save data may be restored once per 24-hour period. When the new feature launches, most PS3 titles will be compatible with online storage for game saves, and moving forward new titles will have the capability to offer the storage option.
No word yet on which older saves are not in the "most" category, but Rock Band might be a good guess since that one is notorious for not being able to be backed up. Speaking from experience, this is the most invaluable service PS+ has brought to the table in the six months or so since it's inception. I for one will now be purchasing an account, solely for the purpose of never going through what I went through last month. It still stings every time I fire up WipEout HD and see that I'm starting from scratch.
For those who need help figuring out how this works, Sony was kind enough to send over detailed instructions:
To back-up:
1. Select [Game] > [Save Data Utility].
2. Focus on the save data you wish to back up.
3. Open up the option menu using “triangle” and select [Copy].
4. Select [Online Storage] as the destination of back up.
To copy:
1. Select [Game] > [Save Data Utility] > [Online Storage].
2. Focus on the save data you wish to copy.
3. Open up an option menu using “triangle” and select [Copy].
Easy peasy! Much nicer than the archaic hard drive backup option! Do it now, fools, before it is too late!
