PS5 CMOS Battery Failure Will Prevent Use Of Digital Games And Possibly Physical Games As Well, Report Claims

Update – After the original findings, @DoesItPlay1 have posted their findings in a PDF which can be seen here. In summary, the problems are as follows:

• The PS5 can suffer from a cbomb issue if there is a dead battery in the console or there is no access to Sony’s servers.
• Once the console rebooted back up correctly all digital games stopped working.
• Physical PS4 discs would boot and trophies worked (although Resident Evil 2 displayed an error message)
• Mortal Kombat 11’s PS5 disc would not install and crashed at 97% installation time.
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales booted and played fine.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War booted but was unplayable due to the game’s reliance on game servers.

The team are going to continue testing and reiterated that right now they only have access to 1 PS5 to test this. Therefore, don’t read too much into these issues right now, but the fact Mortal Kombat 11 didn’t install was concerning.

Those who own a PS5 Digital Edition should be concerned, however, as a cbomb scenario means all of their games are unplayable.

Original Story – Much like how the failure of the PS4 CMOS battery will prevent that console from playing digital games, so too will the PS5 also fail to play digital games if the CMOS battery in the console fails.

This revelation comes from the eagle-eyed, games preservation Twitter account Does It Play, which confirmed that a ‘kind volunteer’ had dismantled their PS5 to test the CMOS battery failure and how it would affect playing PS5 games.

So far only initial results have apparently been shared in this ‘cbomb’ scenario, in which a failed PS5 CMOS battery will indeed prevent the console from playing digital games.

However, it’s worth noting that a ‘cbomb scenario’ on PS4 actually results in that console being unable to play both physical and digital games, thanks to a busted CMOS battery preventing the console from connecting to PSN and validating your licenses.

Though the situation could theoretically be resolved by an update, it’s worth noting that no such fix was present in the recent PS4 and PS5 software updates that occurred this past week.

As per the tweet seen further up, Does It Play says that more information will be coming but until then, it’s not looking especially good right now for PlayStation gamers who want to preserve their games over the longer term.

Source: [Does It Play]