Ever since Skyrim was released in November, gamers have been posting all over the Internet about problems with the PlayStation 3 version of the game. Apparently, issues ranging from incessant slowdown and framerate stutters to outright freezing are tied to the size of your save file, which grows excessively as you work your way further and further through Bethesda Game Studios ' most recent epic RPG.

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Interestingly, a developer from outside Bethesda has sounded-off about what he thinks the nature of the problems are, as well as the fact that these issues seem somewhat unavoidable because of the very nature of how an open-world RPG like Skyrim runs and saves on PS3.Joshua E. Sawyer, who was the Project Director and Lead Designer of Fallout: New Vegas , has posted answers to many questions being asked about Skyrim on his Formspring account . While Sawyer works for Obsidian Entertainment and has no connection to Skyrim's development, making New Vegas A post on Bethesda's formus has boiled down some of this impromptu questioning-and-answering into something more easily digestible.One user asks Sawyer if the size of the save file is indeed the cause of these issues. Sawyer responded by saying that the size of save files could "be a big problem, especially if you're on the PS3. The longer you play a character, the more bit differences on objects (characters, pencils on tables, containers, etc.) get saved off and carried around in memory." His mention of "bit differences" is a reference to a bit field , which is a way data can be stored.Another user angrily asks Mr. Sawyer about why games are released in such poor condition, to which he answered that Skyrim's problems are "an engine-level issue with how the save game data is stored…" Many other users are angry at Bethesda Game Studios for Skyrim's subpar performance on PS3, however, but Sawyer defends Bethesda. "It's not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place… We're talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment."Yet another user asked Sawyer if these problems are exclusive to PlayStation 3, which he answered, "as with Fallout 3 and Skyrim, the problems are most pronounced on the PS3 because the PS3 has a divided memory pool." When pressed on what a "divided memory pool" means, Sawyer clarified: "The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory. The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It's the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of."It's important to note that, as mentioned earlier, Joshua Sawyer has no connection to Skyrim's development, so without Bethesda commenting officially on what he has to say, everything should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Still, no one can deny Sawyer's connection to open-world RPG creation using Bethesda's own tools, so what he has to say about Skyrim's problems are still of great interest.