The redesigned PlayStation 5’s removable optical drive can reportedly be easily moved from one machine to another.

In the video embedded below, a YouTube user called Mystic has demonstrated how to move a Blu-ray drive that’s already registered online (we’ve written about how doing this once ruins future usability: if the servers go down, the hardware becomes e-waste) to another console. The second PlayStation 5 quickly registers the new drive, so there’s no complaint that a Blu-ray drive can only be used for one console, as it functions more as an accessory, a peripheral.

It’s like a controller. If you reset the PlayStation 5 with a removable optical drive, the console has to be reconnected to the internet to register it, but once that happens, the console and Blu-ray drive can be used completely offline. However, if you use a new PlayStation 5 without the internet, the discs won’t be read by the drive, and as you can’t download games without connecting to PlayStation Network, the whole console is essentially unusable. As the new PlayStation 5 needs the internet for authentication, there may come a time when the licence authentication servers are not working, so when this happens Sony will need to release a firmware update to remove this need, otherwise the console will expire!

The online titling is certainly due to the DMCA to use Blu-ray players as authentic hardware, so this could be a step against piracy, but if you ignore the fact that the console itself is not at such risk (emulation is a long way off…), they are going a bit overboard with this move. Oh, and the situation with the Xbox series is even worse: you can’t even get it to work without an Internet connection, which makes Microsoft look bad.

It’s a nice, bright future that won’t be ours…

Source: VGC