There is no greater enemy of modern technology than heat. Microchips and high temperatures are a bad combination, and if miniaturization isn’t progressing as expected, it’s partly due to limitations in battery size and the increasing need for efficient cooling. While elegant and intelligent design can often address these issues, it’s not always sufficient or properly implemented. Sony learned this the hard way over the past weekend.
The Evo 2023 event took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, this past weekend, marking the largest fighting game event in the US, and perhaps the world. This gathering brought together a massive number of people with a vast array of consoles in an enclosed space, which, even if well-cooled (and we assume Las Vegas is), ended up stress-testing the machines. So much so that many PlayStation 5 consoles revealed their limits.
Several professional players who made it to the third day of the tournaments have complained on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the PlayStation 5 consoles they were playing on were heating up to the point of damaging their USB adapters. This is a dramatic issue because, in fact, all professional fighting game players use wired USB controllers due to the lower reaction time compared to wireless connections. This means that, at best, they had an unusable cable for the remainder of the matches, and at worst, their means of continuing in the tournament had been completely destroyed.
While Sony has not officially addressed this matter, it’s a significant problem because the primary promoter of Evo is the Japanese company, which acquired the organizing company in 2021. In other words, only PlayStation 5 consoles are used for the tournament. Considering that the console only has one USB port on the front, if the heat damages the port – even if the connector remains intact – it renders the console unusable for the rest of the tournament until it’s fixed.
If this turns out to be more than an isolated issue, Sony should make a statement addressing the matter and explaining how they plan to resolve it. The integrity of Evo 2024 could be at risk due to this, but also the integrity of any other tournament and, of course, that of any PlayStation 5 out there. Because if heat affects it in this way, considering how climate change is only intensifying, Sony can’t exactly claim to have a minor problem on their hands.
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