Just got one step closer to being a digital download advocate

[YoshiM]

As much as I have been adopting digital downloads lately, even over readily available physical counterparts where there is little or no price difference, anti-consumer issues pop up from time to time to remind me why physical media is still relevant.

Case in point, news is making the rounds that the PS3 and PS4 essentially contain a 'suicide battery' of sorts. The CMOS battery keeps your internal clock going, but is also tied to your digital purchases. If the battery is dead, or changed, the system must 'check in' to the Playstation network server to re-sync the clock and reactivate your digital purchases. If the server can not be reached (either due to lack of internet connection, or if the Playstation server is no longer active in the future) your PS3 or PS4 digital purchases will return an error message (80010601). I'm unsure of the rules for posting video links here, but if you search Youtube for CMOS PSN, the first video will show this process. Again, this is speaking to the future when both the battery has died, and also presuming that the Playstation server responsible for re-sync might be deactivated.

Just a reminder to us that by design we don't own anything but a limited license to play a digitally purchased game, and within all the legalese of the agreement we are forced to accept is a statement that no guarantees are made as to the continued functionality of those games whatsoever. It's a shame that I should have to reconsider technology that is both more convenient and makes hoarding more physical objects obsolete because of publisher/manufacturer greed and control.

Holy hell....that's news to me. I wonder if the Vita might be in the same boat? The upside in my case is I don't have a lot of digital stuff for PS3 and I haven't played much of anything on it. But still-that totally sucks.

[gbpxl]

reminds me a lot like how GM says when you buy a car, youre not actually buying the car. no youre buying the right to drive that car and thats it. you cant perform any maintenance on it yourself or modify it somehow

[RARusk]

The modding community is probably already hard at work finding ways to overcome these problems. I'm not too worried. The floodgates will open once the last PS3 update is jailbroken as Sony will have abandoned the model and won't stop people from modding it.

[Gameguy]

Holy hell....that's news to me. I wonder if the Vita might be in the same boat? The upside in my case is I don't have a lot of digital stuff for PS3 and I haven't played much of anything on it. But still-that totally sucks.

Here's the video that explains it, I don't think it affects the Vita as nothing was mentioned about it but it will also affect the PS4 eventually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl0582D52ng

It's actually worse for the PS4 as the issue will apparently also kill physical discs from working, not just digital only games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcIn112ZLcY

The modding community is probably already hard at work finding ways to overcome these problems. I'm not too worried. The floodgates will open once the last PS3 update is jailbroken as Sony will have abandoned the model and won't stop people from modding it.

It's already overcome if you're willing to mod your system and pirate the games, it's been confirmed that this is already possible. At least with the PS3, I'm not sure how hacking is going with the PS4 as I haven't looked into it.


I refused to buy any type of digital only release for games or movies and will continue to do so, I see no reason to financially support practices I don't agree with. I want physical releases and I don't see why companies will produce physical copies if people will just pay them money anyway for digital only releases. Even with physical discs it will still suck for games that need patches, as those won't be available so games will play broken. So many unfinished games get released these days.

[YoshiM]

I did a little research and thus far, no mention of a Vita CMOS battery. I did see articles in passing about PS3 dating back to last year. I think the store going down for that system brought that issue back into the light.

[mailman187666]

Not sure of totally related, but I am unable to update any of my physical vita games. The internet connection is fine, and I have over 2gb of space left on my memory card. I'm not sure what to do about updating any games I haven't popped in the system yet, but I have had this issue for awhile now. Its almost as if I will have to mod it at some point just to be able to push updates through, if that is even an option. I'm just playing V1.00 of everything I put in at this point.

[YoshiM]

Not sure of totally related, but I am unable to update any of my physical vita games. The internet connection is fine, and I have over 2gb of space left on my memory card. I'm not sure what to do about updating any games I haven't popped in the system yet, but I have had this issue for awhile now. Its almost as if I will have to mod it at some point just to be able to push updates through, if that is even an option. I'm just playing V1.00 of everything I put in at this point.

Since your Internet is fine, is your Vita up to date (and if not, is that an issue as well)? I haven't had to update anything in a while, so I'll see if I have anything that needs it.

[Gameguy]

Not sure of totally related, but I am unable to update any of my physical vita games. The internet connection is fine, and I have over 2gb of space left on my memory card. I'm not sure what to do about updating any games I haven't popped in the system yet, but I have had this issue for awhile now. Its almost as if I will have to mod it at some point just to be able to push updates through, if that is even an option. I'm just playing V1.00 of everything I put in at this point.

Not quite related to the Vita but Sony has already started taking down patches for PS3 games.

https://www.thegamer.com/sony-removi...battlefield-4/

[mailman187666]

My Vita is at the most current firmware. I've noticed this issue about a year ago too. I'm not sure if it's a specific problem with my vita, or if it's on Sony's end. I wonder if that makes my physical game collection for vita junk. Or at least the ones I haven't installed yet.

Edit: It used to run updates fine, now the update icon won't show up on any of the specific game's pages.

[YoshiM]

I've got "Shakedown:Miami" which recently got an update that I didn't download. I'll try updating tonight or tomorrow at home and see if I get any errors.

[Steve W]

I'm currently trying to download games and patches for my PS3 but I seem to have filled the internal HD, and I can't figure out how to make an external HD that I can back games up on with my Macintosh. I keep getting conflicting walkthroughs and have erased, formatted, and partitioned a portable HD at least a dozen times in different ways and still the PS3 doesn't recognize it. There's a lot more I'd like to grab while the PS3 store is up, but I'm getting messages that I can't download any more since the internal drive is full. I ordered an officially licensed PS4 external HD from Amazon, I've read that it's also properly formatted for the PS3 so I can back up to that hopefully. I've got craploads of games just to download updates for - I have a Japanese copy of Okami which never came out physically in the US, when I ran the game the first time it said there was an update and it downloaded something like 4 and a half gigs of data. Turns out it recognized my North American machine was playing a Japan-only copy of Okami and it nicely downloaded the English digital version for me. Too bad my other Japanese games don't do that.

[YoshiM]

I was able to download the update for "Shakedown:Miami", so the updates do work.

Maybe you need to reset your Vita?

[gbpxl]

hearing about the PS3 and PS4 news just makes me glad I really dont play much beyond 5th gen. Nintendo/7up Company/Tommy Tallarico will never be able to stop me from playing Cool Spot and I know that pisses them off. Physical media is the bane of the media giants.

[mailman187666]

I was able to download the update for "Shakedown:Miami", so the updates do work.

Maybe you need to reset your Vita?

are you talking just doing a factory reset?

[YoshiM]

That's what I was thinking but it looks a bit like it's a pain. Let's go easier-have you tried logging out of PSN and loggibg back in?

Also, what games are you not seeing updates for? Maybe Sony or the publishers are yanking updates like they are on PS3.

[Gameguy]

The latest news I've found is that the PS5 is also affected.

https://in.ign.com/playstation-5-pla...ery-death-sony

[mailman187666]

That's what I was thinking but it looks a bit like it's a pain. Let's go easier-have you tried logging out of PSN and loggibg back in?

Also, what games are you not seeing updates for? Maybe Sony or the publishers are yanking updates like they are on PS3.

The latest one I tried was Tales of Hearts R, but I've also tried about 3 other games with no luck. I can try a few other methods, but I'm wondering if my vita is just faulty at this point.

[Highwind Dragoon]

My Original DS started to give off a heated metallic smell yesterday, I shut it off immediately, removed AOE: Age of Kings DS and Shining Soul 2 from their respective game slots, and wrapped the DS in non-flammable material and put it in a well ventilated side room until I can safely remove the battery.

My original GBA's d-pad barely works anymore.

It would be nice if a CERTAIN COMPANY (Nintendo) would make GB, GBC, GBA, DS and 3DS games available for purchase on the Switch E-shop.

[ArcadePerfect]

It's so comfortable to have the whole library be digital. The main drawback is always running out of space eventually and having to delete something or buy larger storage imo. It seems games are only taking more and more space with each newer release.

[Gameguy]

My original GBA's d-pad barely works anymore.

A bit late in replying to this, but did you clean the contacts of the d-pad to see if it improved anything? I've had to do this with a few controllers and they worked properly again after cleaning.