Bethesda aware of Skyrim PS3 issues pre-release

Bethesda was aware that the PS3 version of its blockbuster hit Skyrim could run into performance issues, the developer has revealed.

Since release, some PlayStation users have complained of severe lag and various other problems after playing the game for a considerable amount of time.

Speaking to Kotaku, chief game designer Todd Howard said it was obvious before release that the way the game works, it was clearly taxing the PS3.

“The way our dynamic stuff and our scripting works, it’s obvious it gets in situations where it taxes the PS3,” said Howard.

“And we felt we had a lot of it under control. But for certain users it literally depends on how they play the game, varied over a hundred hours and literally what spells they use. Did they go in this building?”

Bethesda has since responded to the reports however, and claims the studio thought it had fixed potential performance problems on the console before the title hit sheleves.

"The team knew the PlayStation 3 version could run into a ‘bad memory situation’ and they coded solutions that they felt would work – and in their tests the solutions did work," read a statement from Bethesda, as reported by Gameinformer.

"Post release a ‘small percentage’ of users were still experiencing issues where it couldn’t keep up, and the team is working hard on solving it."

The studio recently released patch 1.4 for Skyrim, which included "long term play optimisations for memory and performance".