Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sorry, Your Disc Drive Needs Wifi”.
First topic: I love that you must have been a little bit offline this week because it always makes W show more fun when I get to get the genu. What reaction from you, the new PS5 slim, appears to require an internet connection in order to pair the console to its removable disc drive. This is, according to small print on leaked images of the Modern Warfare. 3 PS5 bundle, the quote here and I’ve. Actually, I’ve actually got the image I can bring up for you guys. The quote here is internet connection required to pair disk drive and PS5 console upon setup. So that’s in the the F yeah there. It is what possible justification. Could there be for this? It says in our notes, this is likely an authentication step, after which an internet connection should not be necessary for the device to function.
Who cares? But that’s a really good question. Who cares is the danger that people will find in a third party external dis Drive yeah and if they did, would that be such a problem? Yeah, like are aren’t the days of pirated Blu-rays kind of behind us at this point? Is that is that really a major concern and if it was a major concern, wouldn’t that happen at such a late stage in the PlayStation 5’s life cycle that it is unlikely to a major problem like I just it seems so weird. I I don’t understand what the difference is between this external drive with. Presumably, I actually don’t even know what interface it’s using, I mean, probably USB I mean it could be, it could be.
It would be genuinely hilarious if it was like ethernet like no like a hot plug SATA, I think, might be more likely. Uh EA was a thing for a very, very short perod of it’s going to be that it was super cool. But it’s not like the SATA standard doesn’t support hot plugs, so there’s no reason that it couldn’t actually be Serial ATA.
But what I’m trying to figure out here is why this would need an extra validation step compared to, if say, for example, you were to swap the internal Blu-ray reader of a regular PlayStation 5, or maybe it maybe it isn’t extra I mean. Maybe this is one of those things where Sony Having learned an awful lot about piracy of their games over the last 25 years. When did the first PS? When did the PS1 come out 96? Let’S see 97, oh man, I uh I am.
I am showing that I do not know my console history here. Probably what year was it 94 wow? Was it that long ago, 30 years of PlayStation, just about apparently American debut was 95? That’S incredible! All right, yeah, Japanese debut was December. Of’94 American debut was September of 95 wow, so Sony’s learned an awful lot from Mod chips and and people people burning their own PlayStation discs over the years.
So maybe this is something that they feel is necessary from an anti piracy standpoint, but I still have to wonder if the long-term impact of this is ultimately going to be more negative than any possible gain that Sony could get from this. I don’t want to be that guy, but I think people are just going to roll over roll over yeah. What what do you mean? I don’t think there’s going to be enough of a splash.
Well, oh, okay! No! I agree. I agree with you 100 %, but when I say long-term impact, I mean when this PS5 slim, that you ultimately paid more money for, because if you want to get the optical disc add-on like down the road, you actually end up paying more than the cost of A regular PS5 with the optical disc drive included could end up becoming a paperweight in the future. If, for whatever reason, Sony decided to turn off their auth servers and your disc drive dies, and you know we kind of go. Oh yeah, but I mean what are the odds that no, the odds are really good.
Oh, I pretty much guarantee that’ll happen. I don’t know when, but like, however, now that PlayStations and Xboxes are basically just computers um, I do think that forward and backward compatibility of games is going to improve a lot. So I don’t think that it’s a huge deal in the same way that if let’s say um, okay, what’s uh, what’s a device that has been notoriously difficult to emulate. Playstation 3! Okay, like I, don’t think it’s going to be as bad as if a PlayStation 3 required an internet connection and then the authentication servers turned off and there was no way to deal with a broken optical drive, because there could conceivably be games. That cannot now and maybe can never be experienced in their full, proper Fidelity without functioning original Hardware, but with the PS5 I do. I do see this as being a little bit less likely. This is interesting. Uh seen in float plane chat suggests that maybe it’s the movie studios that are requiring it in some way, but I honestly find that pretty hard to believe because it’s not like you can’t still play back a Blu-ray disc in a computer, for example, you just require Licensed software that has the encryption keys with that said, I haven’t tried to do that in a very long time.
Can you play back UHD like like the the latest HDR 4K Blu-rays on a computer comp? I don’t know. I know that there’s that complicated mess around watching 4K Netflix on a computer like you need a platform that supports uh Intel’s. You know latest hdcp nonsense and all of that and you have to use a browser that supports it. Uh snowek in float plane chat, says yes, as does loading still, okay, apparently you can still do it and you would obviously be able to do that without pairing, the disc to the console.
But I pretty much guarantee you at some point when that software is configured. You will need to do some kind of online check and I do wonder if this is something that is down to movie movie studio pressure. That makes the whole thing make a ton more sense. But it’s I mean it’s no less dystopian like you, buy a product and so what someone else decides you’re allowed to use it or not like no, I buy it.
I plug it in is all the hardware there. Well then, it should probably work and that I’m surprised this wouldn’t get caught by like a right to repair thing almost well. I mean it is that’s why it’s news. Oh yeah, people are super mad about it, or at least they think it’s super stupid.
I don’t know if most people are necessarily mad, because here’s another thing – and you know back to your point about Gamers just rolling over, for this like we seem to do for everything – is who runs a PlayStation 5 without an internet connection. Yeah, like I think this will as as stupid as this is, I think it’ll affect very few people like well today. That’S the problem, though. That’S wreck itself completely when you can’t download games for it anymore, which will happen, and you can’t have this disc drive.
It’Ll literally just be a brick. I am making a poll real quick here because I want to know if People’s current gen consoles are 24/7 connected. So I’m just going to set a two-minute timer on this. Let’S run this on Flow plane, so guys I want to hear from you. If is your PlayStation 5 or your Xbox series connected 247? Let’S pull up the results. Okay, are you guys? I think that’s not true there. I genuinely think that’s not true. Why do I even bother polling you guys, yeah? I I just straight up: don’t believe that poll at all yeah, that’s they okay for those who aren’t able to see teeny weenie, I traino Vision down there.
Three out of four are saying yes connected all the time, and one quarter are saying no not connected. I yeah I’m sorry. I actually just don’t buy that even like more than a quarter, it’s 30 % right now, um. I I I think that might be some people being like. Well, I turn it off and then it’s not connected to the internet or something I don’t know what we mean is, like I didn’t say powered I said connected. I said connected yeah.
If it’s I mean yeah, okay, Wireless. If it’s authenticated, I consider it connected. Look. You want to get pedantic or whatever, but they might be. That’S what I was saying yeah. That’S not that’s not very useful.
You guys that’s not very helpful yeah um, I never unplug mine from the internet. Yeah I mean most most people wouldn’t like the the idea of the vast majority of people that own a console it’s either going to be plugged in or it’s going to auto connect to Wi-Fi the second. You turn it on like the idea of your device.
Only connecting to internet when you need to use the Internet is is so outdated. We might as well be talking about the PlayStation one era. At that point right, like back when we had dialup, we had to make a conscious decision to connect to the internet.
You, like you, get all the modem connecting sounds. I mean ever since Broadband. I know I didn’t do a good job of that. It’S fine just get over it ever since Broadband things are just connected 24/7 because they don’t tie up your phone line. So if your console is connected at all, I’m sorry, but I simply do not believe you that you explicitly disconnect it and then connect it when you need to use the internet. I actually do not believe you that would be wild yeah uh. I saw some people in chat being like. Well, I don’t have a console and it’s like yeah that well, that’s not what I asked. The question was only for people that do have consoles is. Is your PS5 24/7 connected? No, I don’t have one. Oh man, you guys either way a vast vast vast, I’m assuming over 90 % amount of people are going to have uh when it is powered on and you own one. It is connected to the internet consoles, that’s say yeah, so so you’re right.
It’S not a problem until it’s a problem and who knows you know, maybe Sony will adopt a a very different stance towards right to repair at some point in the future, and they will you know when they turn off the authentication servers for this. They will they’ll. Do nothing yeah. That’S that’s, probably way more realistic, yeah! That’S! It’S really! Frustrating .