Disconnecting the Playstation 5 from Internet installs DVD games faster

https://old.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/t6nfyl/question_how_long_does_your_disk_installations/

by wslh • 2 years ago

134 129 2 years ago

old.reddit.com

nottorp3• 2 years ago

On the ps3 or ps4, using google's dns speeded up network downloads :)

Does anyone suspect Sony of knowing how to make online services?

gjsman-1000• 2 years ago

Well, they seem to know better than Nintendo…

type0• 2 years ago

they do know how to make rootkits

tonetegeatinst• 2 years ago

Can I get the source for that? And any sourcecode + how they legally got away with it in court?

mortenjorck• 2 years ago

Given that the last one they shipped was 19 years ago, I’m not sure that expertise still exists in-house.

astrange2• 2 years ago

That sounds like a problem with your default DNS server, it's not like Sony provides one.

bogantech• 2 years ago

ISP DNS can be dumb and confuse CDN geolocation.

When I lived in Malmö my ISP DNS would result in Akamai CDN content being served from Stockholm rather than Copenhagen which was a lot closer and faster.

When I switched to 1.1.1.1 this problem went away

kotaKat• 2 years ago

I work for an ISP and have user-facing support tickets for "slow speeds on Playstations" happen.

First thing we do is pop the hidden browser on the console (if it's a PS5, where they decided to "remove" the browser) and run a speed test and it'll pull full rated speed of whatever service we throw at the user.

I can pull full wire speed from North America to Cape Town on a Playstation but god forbid you try to download from PSN in the same country. Doesn't matter what DNS we've used - be it our internal, Quad9, etc.

Springtime• 2 years ago

According to the comments there it seems the console is downloading the bulk of the game from the online servers rather than off the disc, when connected to the internet, rather than waiting for the disc installation then downloading patches.

So I suppose for the users affected their connection is slower than pulling off the disc.

ace23582• 2 years ago

Probably due to day-1 patch :( so the disc is ‘out of date’.

smaudet• 2 years ago

This is a good reason to wait for "gold" editions etc. Not sure if they still sell 'em but you would get a patched version that is actually done.

asveikau5• 2 years ago

If I were working on such a thing I'd want the patch to be downloaded as the smallest possible delta from what's on the disc.

bandrami• 2 years ago

There was some multiplayer FPS a few years ago that had a day 1 patch that was larger than the game itself.

b3orn• 2 years ago

The patch download shows up as a download once you put a disc in for installation. The console still installs from disc and you can usually play without the patch. I actually had a game that failed to install from disc, the replacement disc worked fine. So unless this is something very recent I have no idea why an internet connection would have an impact on disc installations.

dclowd99012• 2 years ago

I’d be willing to bet that they check if there was an update and then just proceed to download the game at latest version. Would have to test it with a brand new release though.

gamepsys2• 2 years ago

My favorite part is that installing games from the internet is technically more expensive for Sony than installing a game from the disc, because they pay a larger network transfer costs.

Is there some spyware involved? Is this just incompetence? Is there another reason for this design?

beeboobaa• 2 years ago

Someone probably just assumed it would be better user experience not having to patch after install. That just doesn't work out when the user's network isn't as good.

dclowd99012• 2 years ago

I think _in general_. Games are stupid big now.

fbdab103• 2 years ago

At one point, I know neither Microsoft or Sony deployed patches as binary diffs. Depending on what assets get patched, it might be faster to download the latest available version instead of installing from local disc and then patching to current as the "patch" may be similar size to fresh install.

killingtime74• 2 years ago

It's not incompetent or even more expensive if you assume network bandwidth is a fixed cost.

gamepsys2• 2 years ago

Why would we assume network bandwidth is a fixed cost? Everyone pays for network transmissions.

kibwen2• 2 years ago

Is there another reason for this design?

Ah, but if Sony uses the disc drive to install the game then they might have to pay royalties to whichever soul-sucking, rent-seeking company owns the rights to the blu-ray format, whoever they are.

tekla• 2 years ago

So, Sony.

People have already forgotten the Blu Ray vs HDDVD format roles huh...

a_vanderbilt• 2 years ago

It's funny you say that as the whole reason the Xbob 360 used HD-DVD was to avoid paying Sony the royalties for Blu-Ray.

numpad0• 2 years ago

Sony was always heavily involved with optical discs, like Qualcomm is with phone modems. 44.1kHz sampling rate of audio CD famously comes from components reused from one particular Sony product that predates CD.

nox101• 2 years ago

Press 1 million discs, sell 500k discs. Price of those 500k unsold discs is several million dollars. Pressing discs is a huge risk. Don't press enough and you lose sales. Press too many and you lose money. Online has no such issues.

486sx33• 2 years ago

Probably by design to make a smaller attack surface. There are no exploits known that come from game discs on ps5. But Sony may know something we don’t.

https://www.psx-place.com/threads/update-2-thefl0w-discloses...

https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20240205-18-year-old-vulner...

kevingadd• 2 years ago

You can still install from disc by unplugging it, though, so is it that much of a real reduction in attack surface?

starttoaster• 2 years ago

I agree with you that attack surface doesn't strike me as a likely answer as to why this is the way that it is. But, who is going behind their PS5 and unplugging it from the network to install a game and then plug it back in again? I don't think the majority of people will be doing that, but I have no source behind that hunch besides general human laziness.

jeffreyames• 2 years ago

Many people have internet speeds faster than the ps5 blu-ray drive read speeds.

butz• 2 years ago

But that internet connection is usually shared between many devices. Kids watching their youtubes, wife catching up on her tv shows, washing machine uploading gigabytes of data to some unknown remote server.

alpaca128• 2 years ago

And many more don't, so it shouldn't be the default or at least automatically switched based on internet speed.

Jare• 2 years ago

If the download includes a patched version of the game, the users may be better off since they'll need to download the (likely gigantic) patch anyway.

But indeed it would be nice if the console asked first.

dijit• 2 years ago

Maybe.

Maybe not.. Do you have market research to back up your claims?

I would guess that your experience is less true than you think, additionally it's not just your supposed internet speed at play here, it's of course disk speed of your machine, disk speed of their machine, every hop you need to hit to get to their CDN; and then you should pray they use a CDN, those are expensive and there's no financial incentive for Sony for you to have a fast download. :)

Beware the ignorance of thinking that your internet connection to your ISP is the only thing that matters regarding internet access.

mips_r4300i• 2 years ago

The game as shipped on disc will generally already be out of date on launch day, with day 1 updates waiting for download. Over time these have started to comprise the bulk of the game itself.

These days it makes no sense to actually copy anything off the disc when you'll have to redownload the entire (updated) build off Sony's servers.

These might be the last consoles that ever have disc support.

behringer4• 2 years ago

That's too bad. No disc equals no buy. Own or die.

Hamuko4• 2 years ago

I just switched over to PC gaming since I trust Valve a lot more than I trust Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony. My Steam account is 18 years old and I can still download my earliest purchase from 2005.

dangus7• 2 years ago

I don’t look at these things in such a black and white way.

Gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies one can have. A $70 AAA game costs less than one mediocre dinner out. And I don’t even personally buy any games at that full price, I try to buy games that cost less than a Starbucks run.

In my entire nearly 20 years gaming on Steam I’ve only spent something like $4,000 on PC gaming software. Steam tells me this in an account report. That’s less than the average American spends on their car in just one year - for a depreciating asset that is eventually worthless.

The percentage of games that have been “revoked” has been minimal. I am aware of some delisted games like a particular multiplayer-only tech demo-ish title that I enjoyed (Shattered Horizon).

My old Nintendo eShop games on previous consoles can’t be redownloaded but they can still be backed up and played and I’ve always received ample advanced notice.

To me, “own or die” is quite dramatic and would be overbearing on my hobby. I recognize that all these experiences are temporary. I can’t go back in time and play Skyrim like it’s the first time I played it. That experience has depreciated. If I go back and play a game like Red Steel it will be pointless because the game is better at representing a point in time in video game development rather than a game that is worth playing in 2024.

Don’t be surprised if the next consoles ditch discs entirely, but my advice to any gamer is to not let that line in the sand stop them from enjoying what they enjoy. Because this hobby is cheaper than basically anything else you can do in real life that is far more ephemeral.

hn927268192• 2 years ago

No disc equals no buy. Own or die.

You seem to imply here that "disk=buy", but that's not even remotely true anymore. I don't know anything about this game, but it seems like this is yet another one that doesn't work offline [1]. So having the disk still doesn't mean you own it.

There are still games where disk=own of course, but using that as your metric of ownership would be incorrect.

1: https://old.reddit.com/r/granturismo/comments/110chtg/can_i_...

kiicia• 2 years ago

It also depends on if patch is incremental or it replaces existing data in bulk

lostruinsofraku• 2 years ago

My issue is games are going all of the above and they are not any more fun than the older ones. No new gameplay features that require the above either. What about the graphics? None of this requires you to ship incomplete and out of date products to the customer. People talk like this type of behavior is necessary and required to ship a game.

dean2432• 2 years ago

DVD? that's 3 generations ago

MYEUHD• 2 years ago

They meant physical disc

The ps5 uses bluray

markus_zhang2• 2 years ago

Modern AAA games are so huge that I don't even bother installing them anymore. I only play classic and indies nowadays. If I want to watch a movie I watch a movie, I don't play games to watch a bunch of movies.

CPR - Completely Personal Rant: ALL modern AAA games are 80% garbage. Yeah! Downvote my however you want. I don't care how much time you spend on optimizing those engines or making those assets. I *hate* the "progress" of modern graphics programming.

sigmoid102• 2 years ago

I don't think this is such a hot take. It's well known that publishers' AAA definitions are trash. Look at Ubisoft and their recent attempt at feeding people the AAAA concept to justify pricing while delivering another mediocre experience. Now everyone makes fun of them because while their game world is huge, it is still incredibly bland. If you want good experiences, you have to sift through all the marketing and propaganda first. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have to limit yourself to casual and indie games.

PH95VuimJjqBqy3• 2 years ago

what game are you referring to?

weebull3• 2 years ago

It's also becoming very apparent that the studios can't support the level of investment their having to make to develop AAA either. A bit like the movie studios, dropping billions on titles that can only make money back if they manage to be the #1 hit of the year.

onion2k• 2 years ago

The Xbox Game Store has a "less than 1GB" category. It includes games you'd probably consider AAA. Certain categories of games like open world shooters are massive downloads but there's lots that aren't.

nottorp3• 2 years ago

Nah, 80% of modern AAA games are 100% garbage :)

A tiny few of them still justify their size. Witcher 3 and Elden Ring come to mind.

Other than that, "more is better" seems to be a disease.

PH95VuimJjqBqy3• 2 years ago

I mostly agree with you, I straight up dropped World of Final Fantasy after I was 10+ hours in and still mostly just watching cutscenes.

They're not as good as movies and they're way longer too. It's like these game producers really wanted to be movie producers.

Mass Effect is a perfect example. I recently played through ME1/2/3 on the PS4 remake and am now playing through ME: Andromeda, so I've gotten to experience all that evolution in a few months.

ME2 was probably the sweet spot, the further you get into the series the more it becomes about the wow factor rather than the gameplay and the characters.

markus_zhang2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I started with ME2 and really liked it. ME and a few others are among the few AAA games I enjoyed to play.

causality02• 2 years ago

Strictly speaking, a Blu-ray is not a DVD. I only mention it because the original author did not make the mistake but the HN submitter did.

sharts• 2 years ago

Hardware companies don’t do software good.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

does ps5 use compression when downloading off the internet and not when installing from disk?

Disconnecting the Playstation 5 from Internet installs DVD games faster

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