PS5 Slim Ultra HD Blu-Ray Disc Drive Will Require an Internet Connection Before It Can Be Used, Leaked Packaging Shows

Tsing

The FPS Review
Staff member
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
12,977
Points
113
Wouldn't it be cool if a company's server was down so a piece of hardware couldn't be installed? Sony seems to think so, as a partial packaging photo for the PS5 Slim has made its way onto the web, revealing that the Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Drive that comes with the standard model (and is available separately for the Digital edition) will require internet access before it can be used. "Internet connection required to pair Disc Drive and PS5 console upon setup," warns a label that @Thunder_clart shared this morning on X. Many are speculating that Sony did this to ensure that the connected drive is the official, intended model, rather than a third-party one that could potentially enable piracy. The PS5 Slim and PS5 Slim Digital Edition will be out in November for $499.99 and $449.99, respectively.

See full article...
 
Many are speculating that Sony did this to ensure that the connected drive is the official, intended model, rather than a third-party one that could potentially enable piracy.
Also I'm wondering if they require this for forced firmware update upon first use.

It's bad enough when a game requires an online connection for anything, but physical hardware requiring such before it can even be used?! Not enough bad things happen to the big companies. Sony should get f*cked for this.

EDIT: I am reminded of how the HD-DVD drive for X360 just automatically worked out of the box, and in fact it also just works on PC. I'm not expecting the same for this BD drive. Probably has a proprietary connector too.
 
iirc if you want to watch a movie on a PS you need to download the software to play them anyways .

On the Xbox side, my series X does not want to play DVD/blu rays due to some DCHP 2 or something incompatability crap. They all have their quirks.
 
It's bad enough when a game requires an online connection for anything, but physical hardware requiring such before it can even be used?!
I remember the good old days of coming home with a new game and just putting it in the console and playing it from the get go. Now it's a huge download/update before you can even think about playing.
Farm.jpg
 
I remember the good old days of coming home with a new game and just putting it in the console and playing it from the get go. Now it's a huge download/update before you can even think about playing.
No, I remember having to wait days to get the patch downloaded on the school network, or wait weeks for the magazine with the bundled CD that usually had the latest patches for games before I had reliable home internet access.

IDK why people think that games having bugs / patches is a new thing.
 
Nobody said it was a new thing. I remember the Atari, NES and Sega days where you came home inserted the cartridge and just played.
 
No, I remember having to wait days to get the patch downloaded on the school network, or wait weeks for the magazine with the bundled CD that usually had the latest patches for games before I had reliable home internet access.

IDK why people think that games having bugs / patches is a new thing.
Wow really? I don't recall that at all with my consoles, at least all the way up until ... 360/PS3, where it just assumed you had online access and the Day 1 patch crap started.

PC games always had a bit of that, but it wasn't awful. The game would generally work in some capacity when first installed from the floppies, but yeah, there were usually some patches that you could find on Usenet or Gopher or something that would fix some glitches or provide some optimization -- or more commonly, the patches were included with the follow-on expansion that you bought that also shipped on a floppy.
 
Wow really? I don't recall that at all with my consoles, at least all the way up until ... 360/PS3, where it just assumed you had online access and the Day 1 patch crap started.

PC games always had a bit of that, but it wasn't awful. The game would generally work in some capacity when first installed from the floppies, but yeah, there were usually some patches that you could find on Usenet or Gopher or something that would fix some glitches or provide some optimization -- or more commonly, the patches were included with the follow-on expansion that you bought that also shipped on a floppy.
I meant games in general, but even PS1 games had multiple revisions. It's not like games don't work in any capacity now either.
 
IDK why people think that games having bugs / patches is a new thing.
Yeah, back then (on consoles at least) devs/publishers did in fact update games, by issuing newer cartridges or CD/DVDs.

even PS1 games had multiple revisions
Yeah even console games in the cartridge days (talking 3rd-gen through 5th-gen) had multiple revisions. For example, v1.1 of DKC2 is too hard for me to beat due to game balance changes, but v1.0 I have no problems going through the game. I have a v1.1 cartridge and my friend has a v1.0 cartridge. There's like 3 different versions of the original Star Fox (v1.0, v1.1, v1.2) and I don't even know the differences between all of them (except that v1.2 fixed some exploits against certain bosses and whatnot). Zelda: OoT had later revisions on cartridge that censored the blood (changing it from red to green), changed music (mainly in the Fire Temple), and made other changes.

And then moving on to the CD and DVD days, yeah there's a bunch of games that had multiple revisions as well. This happened a lot more with optical media because that was much cheaper to produce than issuing new cartridges. Still I'm surprised by the number of games on cartridges that had multiple revisions. If you go looking for ROMs or ISOs you can usually find them for all the different versions of a particular game. And yeah often-times the newer revisions had bug fixes, not just game balance changes. Sometimes there were additional bug fixes during localization as well. Sega Rally Championship on Saturn had an original Japanese version, then the USA version which had improvements and bug fixes, and then a 2nd Japanese version that incorporated all the improvements and bug fixes from the USA version plus more, and they also added support for the analog controller.

So yeah, patching/updating games is nothing new, it's just got a lot easier during the Internet days, and consequently devs also got lazier. Most slipped into the bad habit of just pushing the game out the door and trying to fix it later. But back before the Internet really took off, a dev and publisher had to seriously weigh whether they were gonna issue new cartridges or optical discs to push out newer revisions of games. There was a much stronger effort to make sure the game was in decent condition before they pushed it out the door.

I do remember grabbing patches for PC games mainly from websites even back in the dial-up days, or from new demo discs that came with computer gaming magazines. Hahahahaha @MadMummy76 did what I use to do, using the school networks to grab patches (and demos too, though I got most of those from demo discs that came with magazines, and that goes for 5th-gen console games too). I remember in my grade school days that another common way of getting patches (or demos, new content like levels and mods, or even retail game expansions) was to grab them from friends who already had them. There was a lot of trading and borrowing of discs going around (and copying of discs...).

Yyyeeeaaahhh, the exact opposite was happening at the schools I went to. I mean how else were we gonna LAN Duke Nukem 3D in the computer labs (especially when there was a substitute teacher who had no clue or gave no sh1ts what we were doing)?

Anyways, back in the cartridge and CD/DVD console days, you couldn't choose what revision you got if you were buying new from the store. It was a lottery. It all depended on when the cartridge/disc was manufactured, and when you bought it. My friend got DKC2 at launch. I did not, so I got f*cked. By the time I got it, they had already made changes to the game. Even if you could look at the cartridge before purchasing, you had to hope that the devs put markings on the rear labels to denote what version of the game was on that cartridge.

If I recall correctly from Digital Foundry's testing, the version of God of War 4 on the disc has an unlocked framerate, but a day-1/early patch put a cap on it (I think by activating VSYNC). So DF often uses the unpatched disc version for certain testing scenarios. Sadly that kind of stuff is not an option with digital-only releases. But yeah we live in an era now where games change over time and it can be hard to get earlier versions. Pre-Orange Box HL2 was quite a bit different from post-Orange Box HL2, for example. No way to get that original version unless you "pirate" it I guess. I have the discs with the original version, but those discs require Steam, which automatically updates the game to the latest version anyways. Not that I care to go back to old HL2, just using it as an example.

Actually, I was just reminded of how CS2 replaced CSGO, and there's no way to get or play CSGO through Steam now. A lot of people are very unhappy about that.

I remember the good old days of coming home with a new game and just putting it in the console and playing it from the get go. Now it's a huge download/update before you can even think about playing.
My brother complains about the modern era where games are tied to accounts and few things are truly offline anymore. It's not like going to the store, buying a Super NES game or Saturn game or whatever, coming home and sticking it in your system, powering the system on, and then boom you were playing. No user accounts, no patches to be downloaded, not even console OS home screens. Just boots straight into the game. He misses that. I do too sometimes.
 
Yeah, back then (on consoles at least) devs/publishers did in fact update games, by issuing newer cartridges or CD/DVDs.
Yes, it was even done relatively recently. Meaning way after the dial-up times. I remember going to the local distributor of Fallout 3 to grab a replacement disc.
So yeah, patching/updating games is nothing new, it's just got a lot easier during the Internet days, and consequently devs also got lazier. Most slipped into the bad habit of just pushing the game out the door and trying to fix it later. But back before the Internet really took off, a dev and publisher had to seriously weigh whether they were gonna issue new cartridges or optical discs to push out newer revisions of games. There was a much stronger effort to make sure the game was in decent condition before they pushed it out the door.
With Day0 patches the term "going gold" has become meaningless, they can put a knowingly faulty or unfinished version on the disc and just rely on patching. But I don't really see this as a big issue as long as the patched version works fine. I mean 90% of my game library is on Steam, so I'm not going to pretend that I care about physical media.

But there is one thing that's worse than fixing the game in Day 0 or Day 1 patches. It is breaking them deliberately. We have had numerous instances where the pre-release review copies of games were different than the version you got when you purchased the game. For example reviewers play a version of the game that has different balance, or no in-game cash shop, or a number of other unpopular things disabled and or hidden. Then after the review embargo lifts they push out a patch that enables the things they didn't want reviewers to see.
I do remember grabbing patches for PC games mainly from websites even back in the dial-up days, or from new demo discs that came with computer gaming magazines. Hahahahaha @MadMummy76 did what I use to do, using the school networks to grab patches (and demos too, though I got most of those from demo discs that came with magazines, and that goes for 5th-gen console games too).
I've had a dial up internet with a 10MB data cap, so I could not download anything from the internet. I only got unlimited data in 99 or 2000, but also dial-up so for larger patches I still relied on magazines.
I remember in my grade school days that another common way of getting patches (or demos, new content like levels and mods, or even retail game expansions) was to grab them from friends who already had them. There was a lot of trading and borrowing of discs going around (and copying of discs...).
LAN parties were basically swap parties back then. But we copied games as well, most of us couldn't afford to buy games in retail. If I never spent any of my monthly allowance I could get maybe one retail game every 2 years. So yeah, we pirated like there is no tomorrow. And I'm not ashamed of it, I think it was a victimless crime. It would've been worse if we could afford it but still choose not to pay for games.
Actually, I was just reminded of how CS2 replaced CSGO, and there's no way to get or play CSGO through Steam now. A lot of people are very unhappy about that.
Game preservation is an issue, and I think there is a class action there waiting to happen. We just need a game that enough people care about and the publisher that is still around to be sued.

I think the "you are not buying the game, only a license to use it which can be revoked at any time" is complete bullcrap and it should be destroyed in court once and for all. Just as the "warranty void if removed" stickers.
 
With Day0 patches the term "going gold" has become meaningless, they can put a knowingly faulty or unfinished version on the disc and just rely on patching.
I've been pretty pissed about that for years. "Going gold" used to be an important milestone, essentially meaning development was done, and the gold master disc or master ROM image with the game's "final" build was sent to be duplicated at the factory. Now "going gold" just means the game they plan to push out the door before development is really done will meet the launch date they said, and work shall continue until eventually the game becomes a finished product (and some games never do end up getting to that finish line).

It is breaking them deliberately. We have had numerous instances where the pre-release review copies of games were different than the version you got when you purchased the game. For example reviewers play a version of the game that has different balance, or no in-game cash shop, or a number of other unpopular things disabled and or hidden. Then after the review embargo lifts they push out a patch that enables the things they didn't want reviewers to see.
Yeah I've heard about that, and there's also the cases where the reviewers are just plain playing a build that is still too early, and the day-0/1 patch creates the "retail" version that could be quite different from what the reviewers played. I don't really believe in early reviews anyways. I think reviewers should review the products AFTER they have been released, so that they play the same version all the rest of us get to play. Kinda like how Seasonic sends reviewers retail units that all the rest of us consumers are able to buy, not some hand-picked test models.

LAN parties were basically swap parties back then. But we copied games as well, most of us couldn't afford to buy games in retail.
Yupz, same here, a lot of swapping at LANParties.

So yeah, we pirated like there is no tomorrow. And I'm not ashamed of it, I think it was a victimless crime. It would've been worse if we could afford it but still choose not to pay for games.
You know, I recall an interview with John Carmack where he said he would rather you pirate his games and get a chance to play them, than not be able to play them at all. He said he himself pirated a lot of games before he was a game dev, and if I recall correctly, it was basically for the same reasons as all of us, not being able to afford retail games.

I think the "you are not buying the game, only a license to use it which can be revoked at any time" is complete bullcrap and it should be destroyed in court once and for all. Just as the "warranty void if removed" stickers.
1,000% agree.
 
Become a Patron!
Back
Top