Thanks for the mention. Just want to make clear that my teardown guide is for CUH-10XXX and CUH-11XXX PS4 models. The CUH-12XXX Models may look the same on the outside but are quite a bit different internally.
Multi billion dollar companies do not really care about consumers, so when they actually do something right then it is something to be surprised about.
Actually they do not care about customers. They do this strictly because they do not want PS4 to become another pirate console that PS3 had become once hackers and modders are able to root them.
If you actually look throughout history, that's always been how it is. Companies taking responsibility when they're not legally liable is very, very rare.
the simple fact that they didn't make the battery a user replaceable item, like they do on the Wii where you remove a screw and pull out a tray is nuts.
It's not that you can't replace the battery. It's that you can't set the time correctly without PSN. Manually setting the time just changes how it is shown, but the system time is still wrong. And when the time is wrong, the game wouldn't start. So even if you replaced the battery, if you did it after PSN died, it still wouldn't work!
It's still a pain on the PS5, but at least you don't have to take the heatsink off to get at it any more. Not that it matters if the newest firmware fixes the issue.
@@laurinneff4304 Or just don't use a battery at all and don't use the clock for stuff you deem critical (something the timestamp on a Trophy isn't at all, btw)
Judging by the nature of the 9.0 Update it may suggest the Playstation 5's 2.0 update also fixed the issue for that console as well. 9.0 allowed PS4 users to see the PS5 trophy data of friends on the system which to me seems to imply they're data synced now. I can't imagine they'd be able to do that without fixing the need to check for a time with both consoles. Hopefully the Playstation 3 will follow suit too.
@@Shadowespeon17 Honestly, when it comes to the PS5 I keep hearing different things about it's issue. I've heard it has no problem Playing physical games but some aren't able to install themselves properly for one reason or another. I'm aware the Playstation 3 has a purely digital issue and the Vita I would assume is the same. Given all these consoles still receive firmware updates I can only hope they should be fixed within due time.
@@Akechi_The_Phantom_Detective he’s talking about physical games, the ps4 was the only one with this problem (spawn wave even did a video about it) but when it comes to digital all systems will not play the games when psn and the battery is down, but that makes sense since the license of the games are linked to psn, and the battery most likely confirms the date and time of when you bought the game
@@bagelmaster8 - Nintendo would make a hell of alot more money from me if they would add them. I completely understand that they're pointless but they trigger that addictive part of me which is why I still buy most indie games on PlayStation.
I know a lot of people love achievements and trophy's and I understand Sony wanted to prevent trophy cheating for a good reason. That said, defending trophies at the cost of the ability to play games, the main reason people actually buy your product, was an exercise in backwards thinking. Glad to know that they acknowledged it and made a fix!
It's also used to keep track of game subscriptions. ie: if you can play any game with a time limit, mostly PS+ games. So users cant just reset their clock to keep a game forever
@@UltimatePerfection It has the issue for digital games. But physical work fine, the issue with PS4 was that even physical wasnt working. I think. Although some people are saying even digital games now work without the battery on PS4.
This is amazing news, well done to Sony and thanks for the update MVG. Let’s hope they can do the same thing with the PS3 now. Shame the battery is a pain to replace with the PS4, at least on the PS3 slim you only need to pop the case and remove the blu-ray drive and not the entire motherboard.
@@osvaldaspaslauskas5040 if your battery goes in the PS3 you have to be always signed into PSN for your digital games and DLC for physical games to work, if you are not connected online the digital games either won’t work or will revert to the game trial. Paid DLC won’t appear In-game either. This happened to me recently and I had to replace the battery. Hopefully a firmware will come out to address this like with the PS4. There was a firmware about 8 weeks ago for the PS3 so Sony are still developing updates for it. The sad thing is many great titles are digital only on PS3, at least today there are more options for physical releases of smaller / indie titles.
I think that as an act of good will to users, when they decide to completely discontinue PS3/PS4 support, they should release a firmware that lets you homebrew the console. It would allow the users to continue using the devices long after first party support is gone.
If we all agreed on not using homebrew for pirating, and we actually wouldn't, homebrew would be a thing that console makers would bring with their system, for example right now you can run your homebrew in Xbox and I just find that beautiful I'm a pirate by myself, so that utopia it's just beyond from the nice things we could have
That will almost certainly never happen, but the huge number of indie games on the PS4 means it is probably pretty easy to develop for, so if they are going to leave the store open then homebrewers could probably just use the official channels to get their releases playable.
It's not soldered directly to the board so it is user serviceable in that sense, but it's buried under so much shielding and wires that it's not something everyone can do, unlike on a PC motherboard which is unobstructed.
the ps2 and ps3 CMOS batteries have all been kinda hidden like this, they are normally on the under side of the board replacing the ps2 one was not as hard but the ps3 was like the ps4 one you had to remove the entire board and heat sink to get to it, so its really nothing new on sony part
It wasn't just him. It was a collaborative effort of multiple users both big and small on the internet, especially on social media, spreading awareness of the issue. And don't forget the original person that discovered it to bring the issue to light in the first place.
Hikikomori Media was among the very first voices, if not THE first, that made this issue known. As someone else said, definitely a collaborative effort! 😊
There is a fix, it's called custom firmware. At this point there's no reason not to install Rebug or similar CFW. With a little extra effort you can still use PSN as well, though there isn't much left do or play anyway.
@@notmyrealname1526 even with something Hen and irismam spoofing your system, there's always chance even 2% you gonna get ban granted easy way to go around this is create seperate dummy account for online but even than games such as minecraft and call of duty Blacks 1 or 2 are highly infamous for constantly checking for unusual behaviors of the system so be warned I have entered online few times for Co-Op multiplayer campaigns it's been fine so far
@@TrashWoodBand No it doesn't only lock you out of digital, but also almost all the physical games you own will also not work. I have personally tested it on my PS3 and that's what happened to me.
Glad to hear this got sorted, and also this might explain why some PS4s were reported as broken after that 9.0 update. Also, I really like your console-related videos. :)
All they had to do was point the NTP address to a public server I suppose. It'd be interesting if someone ran a packet capture whilst the battery was out to see if so.
@@31redorange08 The internet will continue to exists even if Sony cease to exists one day. In the video unplugging the network cable was the easiest way to prevent the PS4 to connect to Sony's network, but IRL you could keep it plugged in.
@@halmotley7903 this was looked at back when the first public freakout was made in April. Basically, the NTP servers sit out on their server farms, and are accessed through your PSN credentials. Your machine (PS3/4/5/Vita) will make a call to the NTP servers if it determined that it needs to do a time check. Those are on separate hosts from the PS store servers, so bringing down the storefront will *not* bring down the NTP servers.
Somewhat unrelated, but one thing I love about the Wii is that the CMOS battery is in a little compartment that doesn't require any disassembly to access and replace.
Yes, that is convenient. The Wii U is like that as well and the Sega Saturn's battery is really easy to access too. As for the Dreamcast... get out your solder gun!
and the PS2 slim in particular it uses an old style of laptop cmos battery, so if you have a spare one that fits the same socket, you’re golden 😁 and it doesn’t really effect online play either
@@2drealms196 Well, the Genesis Mini and Astro City Mini's don't have any sort of battery so that's not a problem. The Game Gear Micros do have batteries, but since those are intended to be portables, the batteries aren't for keeping time. So, no problem with any of their "newer" consoles! ;)
Good for Sony for just fixing the problem in a update. We need to get all game companies on board to preserve games and allow us to play our owned games for the next 20 years and beyond.
I tend to agree, but in order for that to happen, there needs to be a unanimous consensus of what preservation really means. More often than not I see it wasted on topics that ultimately boil down to convenience (like backwards compatibility), rather than video game media that is in legitimate danger of becoming entirely inaccessible on any platform in the coming years.
I would like to thank you MVG for this to happen. Your video put the light on this serious issue and you are the reason that people would be able to use their PS'4 for as long as they can keep them running. thank you!
I really really hope they fix this issue on PS 3. I have a lot of digital games on their like PS one titles...hate to see them go...thats history there
@@bas7467 Well Nintendo finally added Bluetooth headphone support even if it took over 4 years. Though they never listen any complaint regarding their online service.
Great work. Thanks for checking out whether or not the latest patch covers the CMOS issue. I don't mind updating my console (I've already got at least 4 devices on cfw with homebrew anyways) to get the fix.
Can I ask when the next update comes out will it carry over what 9.00 did to stop the cmos issue ps4 because updating to 9.00 is bricking ps4 so what's your thoughts
@@sachoslks Yeah, except for extreme cases the game is still playable. Performance might be a bit worse and it may have some bugs here and there, but generally it'll be okay.
@@startedtech also, patches can still be downloaded. You can still redownload purchase wii game you bought digitally even today. the games and content aren't going anywhere. Sony aren't gonna delete them.
Wait, wait, wait... you think that the store's web servers are going to be running on the same metal as the content servers (game binaries/patches/etc...)? Sorry, but that did get a small chuckle out of me, since that's not happening.
@@mattgaia lol, Haha, you're funny. no one mentioned the stores which will shut down eventually. You think the patched versions of games won't still be available for redownloading? In the future applying patches will be no problem at all. especially with how digital gaming is now, getting your hands on those old patches will be no problem at all even if you don't go directly to sony.
Great to hear this, but does anybody know if a similar update will come to PS3? This console is specially dear to me, as there's an absurd amount of great games I can only play there (e.g. Vib Ribbon using my own music CDs, House of the Dead Overkill, Puppeteer, among others).
The PS3 doesn't have the same issue though right? You can still play physical games on it even without internet. Even if they take down the store you can still play discs as far as I know.
Man I am really bummed out how the PS Store/PSN (same with other consoles) could be just shutdown, killing games/apps that require online features, as much as people on the internet have the collective 'tism to keep things from dying, I wish the companies behind them would attempt to atleast give a helping hand rather than straight up kill these platforms as there are exclusive games that would just work on that particular console.
@Black Future - Jailbreaking the Vita was one of the best decisions i've made cause it was collecting dust otherwise. It's probably my favorite handheld of all time now that I have access to so many games and extra features that Sony didn't offer like using a Micro SD card for storage.
I still have my DVDs, CDs, BDs. Back in the day we used to own things. Now we just rent, and this is how renting works. There comes a time that the landlord will demand you to clear the premises.
Yeah, on consoles especially digital game purchases are just ehhhhh. I really don't see how the convenience outweighs the value of a physical game. Like you actually own the game physically, so if your account gets banned, network shuts down etc you can still play the game. Not to mention, being able to sell games. Even if you trade it into GameStop, you can sell a new release back to them for like half the cost of the game. Buying digital on console is just dumb if there's physical versions.
@@startedtech The logic for most people is that the disc usually doesn't even contain the gamedata anymore, at least for AAA games the disc is just a key that unlocks the download. Its not that preferences changed, there's just no difference anymore. Yeah you can resell it, but if thats not something you normally do, a disc that's just a key is essentially worthless.
This 10 minute video must have taken at least 5 hours to produce if not more, and if as you say you tore down eassembled a PS4, plus tested everything you did. Oy, that's a lot of work man! THANKS!
Awesome, especially as getting a replacement PS4 soon so nice to know its fixed when I update. Was nice to see you show the error and the fixes instead of just the fixes like some other channels.
I’d thank PlayStation but it goes without saying this should have never been a thing. I will thank you and the OP for bringing this to people’s attention. Thanks a lot. Now, if PlayStation updates their PS store so users can purchase legacy titles I’ll bend down and kiss their cheeks.
I don't understand why they are dragging their heels on PS1 and PS2 specifically. I don't think modern PS3 emulation is even really good as you push it with 1st party titles. It might be a lost cause for a few years. I would recommend Sony buys the pc emulation and trophy tech for PS2 that's been created by enthusiasts.
Thanks to you and DoesItPlay for bringing the issue up and the Playstation community for caring about the stuff enought to make their voices heard now we reap the rewards. Thank you dude!
@Bence Sárközi ah I see you’re butt hurt because you obviously don’t have one. I’m just saying that people with a PS5 now and in the future won’t have to worry about the CBOMB issue because they can just game on the PS5. Obviously it’s better that the PS4 doesn’t end up as e waste but for me I wasn’t worried about not being able to play PS4 games.
Really great to hear. Hopefully, we'll get confirmation that the PS3 and 5 are fixed soon as well. Thanks for covering this issue so diligently, MVG. You're the man.
@anime bobaxd Wow dude, like what if bro. The PS3 issue as I understand it is actually a much easier fix than the PS4's issue, so they shouldn't have much trouble with it. If they somehow can't fix it, at the very least a public apology should be in order and perhaps partial refunds as well because if I remember correctly, these are supposed to be lifetime licenses.
Thank you for the info. While I appreciate that Sony have fixed the software issue, I am still annoyed that what is essentially a Trophy cheating prevention mechanism could brick consoles of people who don’t even care for Trophies! Also, can we appreciate how Nintendo put the Wii/WiiU batteries in an easily-accessible slot that means you can change them without a full system teardown!
I don't understand why there's a separate store for every Play Station, why not implement one like the Windows Store (All apps in one place but ARM apps will not install on x86/x64)? Also maintaining a time server should be very trivial, why take it down ever? They use very little bandwidth and require little maintenance.
Would you pay to host and serve TBs of games that sell maybe 100 units a year, and a platform that gets almost no daily use? It wouldn't be "trivially easy" but not impossible, but that doesnt mean they see any benefit to it.
@@stitchfinger7678 Well we didn't really think that about retailers that stocked old physical games. Sony are the ones making bank, they're now the sole retailer of games and making money hand over fist with their retail monopoly. Least they could do is keep their store open.
@@stitchfinger7678 To a major company like Sony "Terabytes of Games" is peanuts in terms of storage. Plus you could use an older, slower legacy server instead of a new one. If ancient free E-Mail providers like Juno and AOL are still available today, I don't see why a major fortune 500 company could not pay the $200.00-ish per month it would cost to host a low-traffic file server and provide things that people actually care about. Steam (which is mostly free to use [not to buy games]) hosts thousands of games which have never been downloaded and doesn't complain. There is no reason that PSN can't. I can assure you there is no good reason for shutting down a platform-run online store in 2021, storage is cheap, internet is cheaper, maintenance is a bit more expensive but not by much. This is a move designed to kill the platform and force people to upgrade.
Indeed fantastic news but i also have read, that FW 9.0 is buggy af, added performance problems and some players report the PS4 now crash/freeze way more often.
Thank you for taking the time to test that the 9.0.0 update has fixed the CBOMB issues. I've just bought a PS4 and will only be using with physical copies of games and don't want to connect it on line. I've updated my PS4 so it's reassuring to know I can still play games if and when the battery dies. Why did Sony make it so hard to replace the battery?
Thank u for the info! I enjoy your vids, and I mean this in as constructive a manner as possible: you repeat yourself multiple times in this video. I get twice for emphasis, but 5+ times is a lot! Again, enjoy the content you put out 🙂 Cheers!
While I'm glad that Sony has fixed the offline aspect of this issue, I wish the community would stop conflating the status of a specific platform's online shop with the actual server at the heart of the matter: the PSN Trophy server. Since the Trophy system has been an entrenched part of the Playstation ecosystem since 2008, with contiguous support for 4 platforms across 3 console generations, this is more of a "Playstation/Internet no longer exists" issue than an issue with a particular legacy model closing its online shop. We're talking the difference in operating costs between content distribution servers that store and send terabytes (if not petabytes) of data for consoles two generations removed versus servers that toggle bit flags on profiles no bigger than a few megabytes per person that are still being used to this day. We all know that Sony had to do something about it regarding the PS4 side of the issue because it was revealed to be an issue before End of Lifecycle. However, the real question remains whether or not Sony will release a system update for the PS3, Vita, and PS TV (as I imagined it suffers from the same issue as every other Playstation platform that supports trophies) to remedy this situation out of good faith, as Sony has no direct monetary benefit from doing so but loyalists to lose if they don't.
Except, unfortunately, that won't happen. Content creators, like MVG, need to present the story in the most click-baity way that they can to drive views, and in turn, drive their own revenue. If they present the story the way that it actually is happening, most viewers will give a "meh... guess the battery should be replaced at some point," and go on with their lives. The way to make the issue happen is making some *big* assumptions (basically, PSN is taken completely down AND your CMOS battery is dead), and not very likely to be an actual, widespread issue.
I didn't think I'd be saying this anytime soon, but thank you Sony. Thanks for insuring the future of the system. Now that this is done, we need the issue resolved for the PS3 and PS5.
Both play physical media fine, so there‘s no need to fix it. Digital games are a whole other problem anyway, which has more factors than just CMOS Battery.
@@aeris2001 It doesn‘t work that easily. They still have to check if you actually bought them. Or else you could just pirate games. Physical games already have a DRM on their own, so there is no need to check online for it.
@@Adeyum64 other people have reported issues with digital games on the PS3 if the battery dies. On the PS4 I didn't have issues with no network access when it was my primary console. So if that's an issue on the PS3, then it actually needs to be addressed. The other obvious answer to that is to disassemble the console and replace the battery.
It could probably survive sundowning of PSN by switching to a public NTP server in the final firmware. That's if it's not already using one. Running their own seems like an odd choice from a platform engineer's perspective.
Relying on external, third-party infrastructure for anything with cryptographic implications is . . . not brilliant. It's not difficult to set up an NTP server (I run several stratum 2 servers in my home network) and, at Sony's scale, it's not even terribly expensive to run a stratum 0 time source like an atomic clock. Really. There are off-the-shelf time server products with both rubidium oscillators (for timekeeping) and GPS receivers (for synchronization) in the 4-figure (USD) price range. Considering that the last Sony DC cage I was in had over 300 _million_ USD worth of equipment in it - and was only half-full, still being set up - I have little doubt that Sony runs at least a few such references.
This looks like a slight oversight by the programmers, which would have had unforeseen side effects 20 years later. And was easily patched in a firmware update once someone drew attention to it.
@@axi0matic Looks like an oversight to me like every other console exploit. As MVG said its main purpose if for trophies. They never planned that much ahead on the implementation of it. Reminds me of the y2k bug. programmer A : lets do this to prevent trophy cheating. programmer B: That's kinda sketchy, would that be a problem when PS4's PSN shutdown? Programmer A: Are you crazy it will not shutdown just let it be, no one will now and there's will be a PS5 after that. Programmer B: Fine, less work for us. There are a lot of holes/bugs on hardware for computer / Hardware / consoles / software / etc are just left like that by the programmers as the consumer oblivious. Hackers just expose those before they fix it. Again just like exploits. This one just negatively impacted consumers.
@@MrRodrigues520 Don't assume malice when incompetence will suffice. If you know anything about development you know that issues that don't present themselves are the ones that slip through the cracks. Removing the cmos battery or any other arbitrary piece of hardware likely wasn't on the minds of any of the people writing the software.
Now we just need to peer pressure them to make the internal background recording on the PS5 optional otherwise we'll have a lot of PS5 e-waste 20-30 years from now.
@@Kain652 You can't turn off the background recording. When a game is on screen, the OS captures it and saves on the SSD. That is why you can save the last X minutes of gameplay without starting the recording in advance. The system constatly writes to the SSD, if you don't save the particular clip to the media gallery, it will overwrite the last part, like a dashboard camera. It causes 8GB of SSD wear in every hour. If you do not have any games on your internal drive, the "Other" folder will have around 21GB of size, that's the recording cache. I've tested it by playing an hour and then saving the last 1 hour of the gameplay (without starting a recording) multiple times, untill it says "System storage is busy", then I went to storage settings and I saw that the "Other" foler is empty. That's because the system moved the capture cache to the "Recordings" folder, but I went back to game, waited a bit and I saw that the "Other" folder started to gain weight again up until 21GB, that's the recording cache from capturing the new gameplay.
@randomguy8196 Yes, automatic backround recording should be optional. If you want the ability to save the last X minutes of gameplay, it's fine but there should be an option if you want to extend the lifespan of your console.
This could be easily averted and keeping the functionality by putting another RAM module as a buffer instead of using the SSD, but I dont think they will ever do this
Good that they want to have some kind of preservation here. But once they put the patching servers out of commission, which will happen sometime in the future, almost all these physical games will be a real awful experience. Those day-1 patches and subsequent patches over the game's lifespan are significant and you can't install or get them without a CFW. The real exception are those GOTY editions like the recent Ghost of Tsushima which comes with patches pre-applied. There seriously needs to be some kind of preservation of patches from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft so players can still play it properly 40 years down the line, like we can with NES games today.
Patches have made game developers lazy. They need to go back to hiring testers and making sure their games meet quality assurance standards. Its ridiculous I have to wait 6 months to buy new releases until the developers decide to fix the game.
@@Throbingkcoc true if this “just patch it later” trend keep going, our physical games maybe unplayable even if there’s no DRM issue (when they shut down the server)
Easy. Install all your games, patch them. And make a backup using the built in backup utility. Put the backup in a safe place. Make another just incase!
@@bookshelffury It will only work somewhat though. We might as well have a proper jailbreak at this point and install those things manually. Heck, we might have something like „Wiimfi“ where custom servers have those update files stored somewhere.
i heard people buy these accounts based on the trophies to show off their achievements is like those assholes buying level 1000 accounts on gta online, so you don't have to grind and you can pretend you played the game before and say you are the best... on wasting money
someone once offered me $200 to get the Street Fighter 4 platinum for them. That and Super Street Fighter 4 were the 2 hardest platinums I've ever got.
It really feels like this is the public answer where the reality was that this was part of a DRM system and also a way to ensure more people buy a new system when their games become unplayable. Much easier for them to claim they are protecting your hard earned achievements than it is to say they are scumbags that wanted to make sure you can't play your old titles unless you rebuy them on the newest version of the system.
Great video, I think I would like to see a video on this issue on ps4 in the future, when 1 or 2 generations more of playstation are available in the market. If there is relevant to cover how homebrew for versions < 9.0.0 allow to run games with trophies, and allowing to edit the dates. Not very relevant for a console that cannot connect to PSN (or maybe there are already homebrew for ps4 that have good trophy support) but I am curious on a retrospective in a few years where issues like the cbomb caused/how it evolved and similar topics on consoles. :)
Can I ask when the next update comes out will it carry over what 9.00 did to stop the cmos issue ps4 because updating to 9.00 is bricking ps4 so what's your thoughts
Bug might be fixed, but it astounds me how much work it is to replace a standard CMOS button cell battery. Surely they could have put a removable cover on the bottom of the system to provide easy access to replace this replaceable part, rather than forcing a full strip down of the system?
My PS2 is 21 years. I recently plugged it back in after not using it, with it sitting unplugged for 10 years, and the date and time was spot on. The original CMOS battery with the PS logo on it is still kicking.
unexpected fix from the official producer is unexpected. This is one of those issues i fully expected to be a 10-15yr from now problem that now requires hacked software to get the PS4 to work again, rendering literally ALL ps4's needing to be hacked even if you arent doing anything homebrew/pirate related.
Claramente dá pra ver que o sistema está incorporado assinatura do jogos dado pela plus , e ao sistema de cadeado ao fim do contrato dos jogo. Os engenheiros só não imaginava que isso iria interferir nos jogos de mídia física . . Pelo visto vai demora pra resolver.
Just updated this morning. Nice to see they actually decided to do something about it. Doesn't the PS5 have the same issue too? Is that one fixed as well?
Spawn Wave tested this out earlier. Not sure if it's still the same as of the latest update. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-blol8dJo-Rc.html
Thank you so much mvg for letting is know I'm so happy to know this and I love sony again I'm glad I didnt lose hope now I dont got to worry about my ps4 consoles at all thank you mvg and thank you Sony for listening
I don't quiet get how trophies are important to anybody- what do you do with them? why would it matter if they get deleted? can you exchange trophies for money or what am I not getting here?
Wait the system time is 12/31/1969? I guess that's minus-1 (all 1 bits if using signed integers) in Unix epoch-seconds. Interesting. That might be how they get a blank date: the default is invalid in most situations and possibly disables advancement of the RTC under outside power.
No. That’s a 0 timestamp but date is shown in US time zone (specifically UTC-6). And the RTC advances just fine which can be seen because the time of date shown is 18:01 so at least a minute after turning on the machine.
