Recent rumor about Sony preparing to pull the plug on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable digital stores has spurred conservations about video game preservation and brought a new issue to light. Apparently, if your PlayStation 4’s internal clock battery dies, you will not only be unable to play your digital games, but also your disc-based games because of the way the console’s trophy system is set up.
The issue was first raised by preservation group Does it Play? and further explained by well-known modder, Lance McDonald. When the PS4’s internal clock battery dies, players are greeted with error CE 34878-0 and there’s no way to fix it other than replacing the battery (if you can find one, that is). However, even after replacing the battery, you have to synchronize your console with the PlayStation Network for your games to work. So if Sony ever decides to pull the plug on the PS4’s online network (say, 20 years from now) and the PS4’s internal clock conks out, the console will be bricked permanently.
McDonald wrote:
This error is because trophies on PS4 require the internal system clock (the one you can’t see/alter) to be correct, so people can’t change their PS4 date/time to make it look like they got trophies earlier than they really did. If your PS4 clock battery dies, all your games die. If your system clock resets to zero, the only official way to correct it is to connect to the PSN network. However jailbreaking the console allows you to set it manually.
Just to emphasize: you can fix this by just putting a new battery in then syncing your console to the PSN once. We are just pointing out that the console will be bricked in some imaginary distant future when the PSN goes away (if ever?).
Cherish the memories.
[Source: Lance McDonald via ScreenRant]
