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My PS3 Skyrim is starting to have the dreaded lag problem. I've tested Skyrim on my PC and it works perfectly on medium settings with 60FPS@720p (and better graphics than the PS3). It is also beautiful on my 55'' plasma and the PS3 controller works once I downloaded "MotionInJoy", so I would like to continue my adventure on PC.

It is possible to migrate my PS3 save game to PC? I've invested a lot of hours on this character and I'm not really in the mood to replay lots of quests.

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    @mark I am broadening a bit; I think this should cover both Xbox and PS3 to be the best possible question and answer. The PS3 part is still unresolved, but hopefully that can be fixed.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:15
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    @JeffAtwood They are two completely different platforms with completely different issues for backing up saves. Xbox 360 is relatively easy and well documented; PS3 is not. This is why I bountied the question: people assume Xbox 360 and PS3 must be similar, so rather than actually testing the answer on PS3, they supplied the Xbox 360 solution and hoped nobody knew the difference. The duplicate theorise mentioned covered the general case: I don't care at all about Xbox 360, so if this question must be about that, I'd like my bounty refunded.
    – user3389
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:17
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    @mark done and done. I don't think there's any value in two different ps3 and xbox 360 versions of this question since the primary focus is "getting Skyrim saves from console to PC"
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:27
  • @JeffAtwood "...from a PS3". People generally don't own the same game on both platforms and don't care at all about solutions for both platforms. It's like asking "How can I create a linked list for all popular languages?" People supply answers in the platform they are experts in; they don't supply canonical answers that are actually tested. The only time that ever works is when the canonical answer is the same for everyone (which it isn't).
    – user3389
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:39
  • @mark edit reflects reality of what's already happening with the question; there are both Xbox 360 and PS3 answers on the question as of Dec 5 (20+ days ago). And the definitive answer for PS3 (as of today anyway) is present on the question.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 29, 2011 at 0:15

3 Answers 3

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There is a documented way to do it on XBox360, which may give you an idea to start from. (Source) Basically, you save the game to an Xbox360 formatted USB drive, then open it on a PC with Modio. You may have to rename the file to savegame.ess.

From what I've heard, this same procedure works on PS3 as well, though I haven't tested it myself.

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    Modio is Xbox 360 only.
    – user3389
    Dec 28, 2011 at 22:58
  • are you sure this works with PS3? The only reference I can find says "PS3 save files are encrypted". It doesn't look good..
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:33
  • I haven't tested or confirmed it myself, no. If they're encrypted, then that's probably the end of the line
    – Hyppy
    Jan 11, 2012 at 3:31
  • I tried the steps given and experienced various problems. 1) The file from the XBOX is .exs (no big deal, just saying...) 2) When I attempted to load the save in Skyrim on Windows 7 is said that the file could not be loaded because it is version 0 and the current version is 8?
    – user39740
    Jan 10, 2013 at 6:09
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After looking around there is no current way to migrate your PS3 Skyrim save to the PC and Modio won't open up the PS3 copy of the save file.

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  • yep, I did a bunch of searches and I can confirm: at the time of writing, looks like on PS3 this is impossible, but is possible on Xbox 360.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 28, 2011 at 23:35
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You can do this by using Modio on the Xbox 360 version of Skyrim.

  1. Transfer your Skyrim save from Xbox to your PC via USB.
  2. Open Modio.
  3. From the Modio menu, select "Open a File", then "Open from Device".
  4. In the little window, open your profile.
  5. Using your mouse, right click above the Savegame.dat, extract file to your Skyrim save directory (My Documents/My Games/Skyrim).
  6. Go to the extracted file and change the extension from .dat to .ess.
  7. Now run the game... Load and enjoy!
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