Rumour that PS3/PSP/Vita store is to permanently close

[Phantoon]

Yeah, those memory cards are pretty terrible. I've only got a couple of cards - a 16GB I picked up years ago, and an 8GB card that came with the PSTV. And lo and behold, not only did the 8GB card corrupt, but it completely nuked itself. It flat-out no longer works, regardless of what I try to do to bring it back. That's when I finally set up the SD2Vita on the PSTV. Gotta think it's just a matter of time before the 16GB card dies, too.

Yeah, the Vita cards are abominable. I have to faff fixing broken files on my 32GB all of the time. Sony made a terrible mistake with those things, it was way too expensive for something that's just crap.

I hear we're beginning to see CMOS problems with the PS4. When the CMOS battery dies you need to replace it and then communicate with PlayStation servers, otherwise the PS4 will refuse to play anything, digital or disc. It's an enormous faff to get to the battery - you have to dismantle huge bits of the console to get to it - and the servers won't be there forever. Ironic that the console that did well because of its stance against online DRM turns out to have crippling online DRM. I'm beginning to think I should just get a Series X instead...

 

[Gaer]

Can the SD2Vita replace the memory card as your primary means of storage when the memory card breaks?

It replaces the Memory Card completely.

 

[Zef]

Oh crap, amid all this Vita talk, I almost forgot that the PS3 store may also be affected. I wonder if I should get around to buying the Drakengard 3 story DLC or just watch a playthrough.

It's been 8 years and I never got the DLC because it's $30 and pretty much mandatory to understand the characters.

 

[frogbeastegg]

I’m making this the push I need to actively prioritise finishing my Vita and PS3 libraries. I’d started working on finishing my older consoles’ libraries early last year after yet another PS2 controller died on me, around the same time I started seeing stories of Vita memory card failure. It’s getting increasingly difficult to rely on the hardware despite my treating it with loving care. I’d made progress but not nearly enough as I like to play a mix of generations.

I’d made a list then. “Classic” and “would like to try” titles for each platform prior to the current generation plus their estimated play time. I set out to be picky, to be realistic about what I most wanted to play as opposed to what I’d ideally play. Thanks to this rumour I spent today trimming it down still further. It’s been a bittersweet process. It reminded me of how many appealling games there are on Playstation consoles; it reinforced how little I like modern Sony’s lack of support for their history. PS3 era Sony was great at this despite their early blunders. In-built compatibility with 3 generations of games, and later the downloads. Europe even got some classics which originally never came out here, and NTSC versions of certain games blighted by bad PAL conversions! Today, that’s Microsoft, and that’s literally why I got an xbox again after losing interest in the brand late-360 era.

Anyway. I’ve got approximately 450 hours of JRPGs to play ASAP on Vita and PS3, and I suppose I should finally get through Valkyrie Profile so that I can retire my PSP before the battery swells. Good thing there’s months more “you must stay at home” ahead. Silver linings, and all that. About a third of the way through Final Fantasy II. Must. Play. Faster!

 

[Sarge]

I hear we're beginning to see CMOS problems with the PS4. When the CMOS battery dies you need to replace it and then communicate with PlayStation servers, otherwise the PS4 will refuse to play anything, digital or disc. It's an enormous faff to get to the battery - you have to dismantle huge bits of the console to get to it - and the servers won't be there forever. Ironic that the console that did well because of its stance against online DRM turns out to have crippling online DRM. I'm beginning to think I should just get a Series X instead...

I had no idea this was a thing. Absolutely horrible.

 

[estragon]

Unless I'm missing something, no one has mentioned yet that the CMOS issue is also directly relevant to the topic of ths thread because it applies to the PS3 as well (but not to the Vita).

So, if you have a PS3 and a Vita, you're probably better off spending leftover PSN Bucks on Vita games than PS3 games, which are a ticking time bomb until if/when modders solve the problem on PS3. (Vita proprietary memory cards are also a ticking time bomb, but as people have mentioned there are already working solutions for that.)

 

[John]

Unless I'm missing something, no one has mentioned yet that the CMOS issue also applies to the PS3 as well (but not to the Vita).

So, if you have a PS3 and a Vita, you're probably better off spending leftover PSN Bucks on Vita games than PS3 games, which are a ticking time bomb until if/when modders solve the problem on PS3. (Vita proprietary memory cards are also a ticking time bomb, but as people have mentioned there are existing solutions for that.)

I read the PS3 has the same issues with digital titles, but discs will still work, at least until the laser goes. There's probably some digital signing going on that would take some doing for hackers to emulate.

 

[estragon]

I read the PS3 has the same issues with digital titles, but discs will still work, at least until the laser goes. There's probably some digital signing going on that would take some doing for hackers to emulate.

Yeah, that's my understanding as well.

I'm talking about digital titles here specifically because it seems like a bad idea for someone to see the news in this thread and buy a bunch of digital PS3 games on such an old system with this problem in the wings, unless you already have unused PSN Bucks and no other use for them.

 

[Sprite]

Here’s a handy list of the RPGs that are at least semi-exclusive to each system represented in the PSN ecosystem. I forgot that Oreshika was a digital-only Vita exclusive. If you only get one game before the PSNpocalypse, make it that one.

 

[Sarge]

Well, digital-only if you don't import the Asian version, which has the full English translation. Only reason I know is 'cause I bought a copy off of eBay along with Soul Sacrifice Delta last year.

 

[estragon]

Here’s a handy list of the RPGs that are at least semi-exclusive to each system represented in the PSN ecosystem. I forgot that Oreshika was a digital-only Vita exclusive. If you only get one game before the PSNpocalypse, make it that one.

The PS3 and Vita stores shutting down really reminds me of how great the PSarchives selection was (especially the Japan region store), and how great it was that they were easily accessible, relatively cheap, and playable across PS3, PSP, and Vita. So sad that they set such a good service up and then dropped it for the PS4 and PS5...

 

[Sprite]

Yeah, there was a while there where it looked like Sony was going to be the paragon of preservation, but then decided it wasn't profitable enough.

Well, digital-only if you don't import the Asian version, which has the full English translation. Only reason I know is 'cause I bought a copy off of eBay along with Soul Sacrifice Delta last year.

Ohhh, okay. So it's not disappearing, good.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Yeah, there was a while there where it looked like Sony was going to be the paragon of preservation, but then decided it wasn't profitable enough.

I don't exactly blame them? PS1 classics were basically just a recipe for printing ez money and it made them plenty of profit for a time. But I remember reading back in the day about publishers pulling their titles from the shop because of rights issues. And if you're a publisher, what would you rather do. Sell a digital version of a PS1 game for $6? Or put a few cheap emulator filters on top and sell it for $60? Because by my money, everybody buying 'remasters' of old games are why we don't have that anymore, more than anything else. And even if Sony wanted to go back to the old ways again, most of the their consoles' libraries that people want to experience again are 3rd party games, they need third parties to buy into it, and they won't.

 

[Phantoon]

No, what I think Sprite means is there was native back compatibility. Until there wasn't. Now it looks like the Playstations have an intended life span after which they die without serious intervention. The CMOS thing is an enormous kick in the teeth, in my opinion.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Native backwards compatibility was historically contingent on specialized hardware, that all culminated in the PS3 being too rich for most people's blood. When that hardware backwards compatibility was stripped out to help bring the price tag down, people started buying Sony machines again. It's hard to argue with the results that consumers ourselves have incentivized this change with our buying practices.

CMOS batteries being soldered onto mobos is a different issue. I also wouldn't attribute that to malice/planned obsolescence than I would just engineering near sightedness. And it's not a practice without precedent. (All my NES and SNES carts that can't hold their save files anymore all say hello.) Meanwhile, we're all carrying around phones that are more expensive than gaming consoles, and those are *actually* designed to have artificially short lifespans, yet we all keep buying them. I'd love it if the hard-to-replace battery on my stupidly expensive cellphone lasted a decade before needing to be replaced, or if my phone could survive over two years without firmware updates crippling my phone's performance (if you're lucky to even get firmware updates and your hardware hasn't been orphaned after a year by the manufacturer).

 

[Phantoon]

CMOS batteries being soldered onto mobos is a different issue. I also wouldn't attribute that to malice/planned obsolescence than I would just engineering near sightedness. And it's not a practice without precedent. (All my NES and SNES carts that can't hold their save files anymore all say hello.)

This is a false equivalence. One, if a battery dies in a cart it will still play, it just won't save. Two, it's easy to fix. I can swap a battery out in a cart in under ten minutes (and actually did so on Monday, twice). If the CMOS dies on the PS4 you can't play any game until it is replaced and it has its internet handshake (also the error message is nonsensical so most who get it in the future will assume the PS4 is dead, dead).

What makes this worse is that you don't pop a panel on the back of the console like the Saturn (2 minute fix). You have to dismantle the thing to its motherboard, with all the potential for destroying the system that that adds. It's actually not soldered in on the PS4, but as you have to rip the bloody thing to bits it may as well be for the complexity it would add. It's different to having to swap a dead capacitor or other electrical component, they weren't expected to pop. A CMOS battery absolutely has an expected death. And it's missing the point to compare it to a cartridge battery. If you swap the battery it will live again. If Sony shuts down the server (and it's not like Sony are famous for killing servers quicker than you'd expect, amirite?) then nothing you can currently add to the PS4 will fix it. It's the server handshake that's the issue. All the CMOS does is kick the problem down the line.

And it's completely intentional - it's this way to block people messing with Achievements. I will also add that because the battery is actually powering something thirstier than a static RAM chip so it will die faster than a SNES battery will.

I'm not sure how it works on XBox, it may even be worse, for the sake of fairness.

 

[Sprite]

I mean we’re all heading towards streaming-only, eventually, at which point we probably won’t be able to expect access to any game for more than a few years.

 

[Phantoon]

Yeah, but the whole selling point of the PS4 was it didn't have the ridiculous DRM checks that the XBox One did.

 

[Sprite]

Turns out you can just lie to consumers and they’ll buy your stuff anyway.

I mean, I’d say this would prevent me from getting a PS5, but I know I’ll break once a Final Fantasy hits.

 

[Violentvixen]

Yeah, we got our Vita for free from my spouse's brother. He got the system on sale/clearance but then couldn't afford the memory cards and gave it to us after deciding there wasn't anything on there he was especially interested in. I still want to know what black magic they have for battery tech though. The thing lasted forever on a charge!

I forgot that Oreshika was a digital-only Vita exclusive. If you only get one game before the PSNpocalypse, make it that one.

Oreshika is amazing and I loved when we were all sharing our crazy-looking clan leaders on here.

Well, digital-only if you don't import the Asian version, which has the full English translation. Only reason I know is 'cause I bought a copy off of eBay along with Soul Sacrifice Delta last year.

Whaaaaaaaaat. I had no idea! Might grab a copy in case my Vita memory fails, and also just to own the game. There's so much text in this it would definitely be unplayable for me without a translation.

 

[Sprite]

Looks like Oreshika is going for $60-70 right now, so it’s probably the right time to buy it. I imagine it will shoot up once you can’t get it any other way.

That’s probably the only Vita game I’m super bummed about, as most other stuff of note has ended up on other platforms. That link I posted earlier calmed me down a bit. Vita’s always been a wonderland of trashy JRPGs, which are comfort food gaming for me. The list of those which are truly disappearing is shorter than I thought.

I just pray there’s enough enthusiast interest to get a viable emulator finished, because these fragile creatures probably won’t last too much longer.

 

[Violentvixen]

Looks like Oreshika is going for $60-70 right now, so it’s probably the right time to buy it. I imagine it will shoot up once you can’t get it any other way.

That’s probably the only Vita game I’m super bummed about, as most other stuff of note has ended up on other platforms. That link I posted earlier calmed me down a bit. Vita’s always been a wonderland of trashy JRPGs, which are comfort food gaming for me. The list of those which are truly disappearing is shorter than I thought.

I just pray there’s enough enthusiast interest to get a viable emulator finished, because these fragile creatures probably won’t last too much longer.

I found an edition with box art labelled The Best (probably a "Best of" compilation) going for close to $25 so going to do that!

 

[gorha]

I had no idea about the CMOS battery thing, that's awful. Why would they make it lock out games entirely instead of just disabling trophies?

I found an edition with box art labelled The Best (probably a "Best of" compilation) going for close to $25 so going to do that!

Can you check the region on that? "The Best" is usually Japan's equivalent of a greatest hits release; if it is the Japanese version, rather than Asian, it won't have the English translation.

 

[Zef]

This thread is the first time I ever hear about the PS3 CMOS issue and now I'm looking at my beloved BC PS3 like it's about to wheeze and die on me.

I most recently turned it on in October for the Halloween Fatal Frame binge

 

[Kazin]

PS3 emulation isn't yet perfect, and requires a somewhat beefy PC, but we can emulate many PS3 games already, so I imagine that will get better over time, especially if Sony stops updating the system (for all I know, they haven't updated it in years, I haven't kept up with it).

As usual, the pirates will save us all.

 

[Violentvixen]

Can you check the region on that? "The Best" is usually Japan's equivalent of a greatest hits release; if it is the Japanese version, rather than Asian, it won't have the English translation.

Dang, great point. Here's a PlayAsia listing for the same version, looks to be the Japan one. Bummer.

 

[Sarge]

Yeah, it gets a little confusing on versions. Until recently, Play-Asia still had it in stock for I believe $40, and eBay prices were about that, too. Pandemic prices, y'all.

 

[ThornGhost]

All the stories I'm reading about the CMOS seem to feature the same source - a single "trusted" hacker that says this could happen. Presumably, one could test it today by popping a CMOS out of a PS4, disconnecting it from the internet and seeing if games will play. Also, this would be easily fixable by a firmware update to allow the PS4 to update its system clock using a public NTP server.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Also, this would be easily fixable by a firmware update to allow the PS4 to update its system clock using a public NTP server.

Or a custom firmware flash that usually becomes pretty easy to do once Sony stops updating the system.

Also, I was under the impression that the battery was soldered down onto the board. If it isn't, I don't see the problem. "It's hard to get to!" Yeah, because it's a modern machine. If it was easy to get to, it would be a launch xbox 360, and those things failed to boot games wayyyyyy earlier on account of having zero cooling/ventilation built in. Someday, chip efficiency might get us to a point where we can have these fancy graphics without needing industrial turbines to keep the silicon they're printed on from warping from natural heat accumulation. But that's a waayyyys off and this is part of the compromise of having good graphics in the here and now.

 

[Phantoon]

Nah, that's nonsense. The CMOS doesn't need to be cooled and it'd be easy enough to stick it by a panel if Sony could be bothered. The 360 overheating had bugger all to do with batteries.

And firmware would fix it, don't count on Sony providing it