Skyrim is a fantastic game—no question about that. However, it’s far from problem-free, as users with the PlayStation 3 version of the game have begun flooding the Bethesda gaming forums with reports that the game is “laggy” after the size of the savegame breaches the 5MB mark.
I have personally experienced the issue with my version of the game—as the game’s textures began to glitch out after a few hours of continuous play. The textures appeared a bright blue, and when I exited the area, the game crashed in its entirety and forced me to restart my PS3 system.
It’s far from unplayable, of course, but it’s still a problem that mars an otherwise flawless experience. Like many games on the PC, it seems like the savegames are causing a memory leak, and affecting Skyrim’s stability.
As noted previously, the only way to deal with the issue at the present is to restart the system. Quitting the game and starting it back up doesn’t do much to solve the problem.
The issue only affects the PS3 version of the game, and players on the Xbox 360 version (which has its own issue with textures) and the PC version have not had any problems with this.