Players are worried about the PlayStation 5 Slims after finding out that reformatting the system will unregister the system’s disc drive, which can result in major issues.
The discovery was first made on Nov. 10, with a Twitter user by the name of DoesItPlay1 warning others that reformatting the PS5 would lead to big problems around disc drive registration and its connection to PlayStation servers.
According to them, this can cause a lot of problems, especially regarding preservation as the moment the servers the disc drive is connecting to has gone down, there’s no way to play games that require the drive anymore.
It has been previously reported by Ars Technica that players will need a stable internet connection to be able to verify the PS5 Slim’s new external disc, which may not last forever.
Compare that to handheld consoles made more than 30 years ago, like the Gameboy, where you can just put the cartridge in and start playing without any need for online verification and you can just see how this can be a problem in the future.
Following the revelation on Twitter, gamers said they were even more worried about other players simply not caring about a console’s preservation. Repeating an analogy similar to above, one Redditor suggested that even though it may not be an issue right now, 20 years down the road is where it will show its problem.
This means curious retro gamers in the future will not be able to check out what the PS5 originally had to offer, assuming its servers have already gone down.
As it stands, it seems consoles are slowly becoming more reliant on online services for things that were possible without one previously—though it’s worth remembering all of this right now is just from claims on Twitter rather than official details.
We reached out to Sony for comments regarding preservation concerns.
