There is uproar on the European PSN forums this afternoon following the delay of the Grand Theft Auto V pre-load.
Customers who had been pre-ordered the PS3 game on Sony’s digital service had, via a message in their download queue, been previously told that the 17GB download would be available to pre-load from today (September 13th).
The game itself would then activate and be available to play on the day of release – Tuesday September 17th.
However, after the pre-load failed to activate this morning Sony has now via its forums confirmed that the pre-load will not in fact be available until September 16th – just a day before release.
This has evoked much anger from forum users, many of whom worry that PSN will be unable to cope with the pressure, preventing their download from completing in time for the launch at midnight.
This is of course a particular concern for users with a slow internet connection, many of whom had pre-ordered on PSN on the presumption that the four-day pre-load window would give them plenty of time to get the game downloaded onto their machines.
There’s the fact, too, that most who had pre-ordered had already added the funds to the PlayStation Wallet, meaning they are unable to recoup the funds in order to source an alternative pre-order.
Pre-loading is not an option on PSN outside of Europe. UPDATE: A Tweet from PlayStation Europe says that the pre-load date has now been brought forward to 3pm on the afternoon of Sunday September 15th.