They were okay at first, but I'm starting to notice that recently, they're increased quite a lot - we're talking upwards of a minute sometimes. Why?

PS: This is on Xbox 360.

I have it on Xbox 360, too. I installed the game to my hard drive, which drastically reduced load times. I mean DRASTICALLY. My load times used to be between 1 minute, 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Now they're no more than 25 seconds. Still not great, but definitely a huge improvement. Install the game to your hard drive if you have the space. If not, make the space. It's so worth it.

I installed it to hard drive also, and i still find the load times to be about the same as FO3 (uninstalled) or worse

yea installing the game helps a lot, i've noticed after i play for more than 2 hours or so mine start taking much longer though even with the game installed, i assume the xbox is getting hot?

I can't believe that load times can be so high. I (PC user) have load times of seven seconds at MOST, like when I first boot up the game and load a save. I haven't played a console since PS2/Xbox; are loading times truly that bad or are you exaggerating?

I play on the PC and load times are pretty much instant, However i was watching a stream last night of a guy playing on the 360 after a couple of hours it was taking nearly 15 seconds just to load when he would enter a building.

Restarting his xbox reduced the load time.

How do I install it, and will this mess up my saves?

So how do I install the game?

On the Dashboard, go to the block where you would normally start up your game. Instead of starting it up, press Y. Then just click "Install Game to Hard Drive". Your saves will be fine. Load times will decrease, the disc has less of a chance of being scratched, the console has less of a chance of overheating, and it will be much quieter.

http://www.examiner.com/games-in-national/how-to-install-xbox-360-games-to-the-hard-drive

P.S.

PC+SSD=awesomely fast loading!

I watched my friends load screen on his PS3 and it was murder in comparison.

Go on the game library and select "Install to Hard Drive."

Or just press Y instead of A, when you go to launch the game and it'll open the game information box, then you should be able to select to install it to your hard drive.

When I got so long load times I just went into the save folder and deleted all saves except for the last one. (Including the auto-save).
That sped up the loading a lot.
(xbox)

Cheers. It wouldn't affect my saves, would it?

I had the game installed on my HDD, at first it helped with load times, but after a few hours it still gets incredibly slow. I'm not joking when I say that on more than a few occasions the game took over 2 minutes to load an area. It seemed the worst around freeside for some odd reason.

Same.

When loading times get long here, I just exit to the dashboard and then load the game back up.
Short loading times once more.

Yeah there appears to be a memory leak in the game somewhere as if you play it for several hours and load regularly (death, mistakes..etc) it'll slow things down to crawl. You can either clear the game cache on load (LB + RB + X while game is loading), or just reboot the console to speed things back to previously. Also some other forum post mentioned a global save linkage to prevent gambling cheats (make bet, lose, reload, make bet, win..etc). If this is the case then having multiple savegames would probably slow down the system with each load (and probably explains the 100 save game max).

Regarding the Strip the doors separating each part may separate areas but the majority of the strip is loaded for entry into one part. As such it's going to be long load times going from hotels to the strip, or freeside to the strip. It's also why they probably removed any Location fast travel points in the actual strip itself as that would require loading times that were extreme. The reason the entire strip appears to load regardless of location is because the high-def signs located outside of the area itself have to be loaded for each area. Notice you don't see the lucky 38 sign or the Vault 21 Hotel sign in freeside, But the signs of the other casinos are visible once you're on the strip itself.

Best recommendation is to just reload the game every 2-3 hours of play time or if it starts to get too slowed down and keep things down to as few saves as possible. (I have about 6 on my current character. I rotate through 3 + auto save for redundancy in case of corruption as well as having more time frame if I screw up and have to go back further to fix my bad judgement in XX situation. Also it doesn't hurt to clear the cache on each load regardless if you're cold booting the game.

Sounds like that global crap is a good way to limit freedom in a video game. You can't reload to cheat on gambling in real life so what makes them think we want the same thing in a video game. Video games are for escaping the svck that is life, not imitate it. Hopefully they'll patch the data leak and their global butt hole.

The load times were really bad when i started to get into the the New Vegas parts but after i installed it, the game is now better than ever!