A Sony Interactive Entertainment patent that’s been recently made public might have potentially confirmed rumors that a new version of the Playstation 5 would launch with a detachable disc drive (mountable drive?). While not officially confirmed, the optical drive patent does refer to the disc drive as being able to be mounted, which adds more weight to the rumor.
“…listed below each disclose an optical disc drive that can be mounted in electronic equipment such as a game machine, personal computer, or audio-visual (AV) equipment.”
As you might already know, it was reported recently that Sony is planning to bring a PS5 with detachable disc drive. Sony already has a disc-less Playstation 5 on the market, but the patented one is able to be mounted on a wide variety of equipment, and according to the patent, also includes fewer components.
“Provided is an optical disc drive that can implement a conveying roller position manipulation mechanism, a centering mechanism, and a chucking pulley operation mechanism, while allowing the number of components to be reduced.”
While there’s no actual confirmation in the patent itself that it’s associated with the Playstation 5 apart from the fact that it mentions “a game machine, personal computer and AV equipment” , the designs shown in the accompanying diagrams do appear to be shaped in a similar way to the disc drive portion of currently-existing Playstation 5 models. Also, we can’t really be 100% sure if this mounted optical can be removed however, chances of it a separate device are high.
The patent’s description shows this new disc drive as a solution to a problem with vibrations.
“An object of the present invention is to provide an optical disc drive that can restrain vibration of the base unit from being transferred to the outer case.”
A disc drive that can be mounted to anything via something like an exterior cable could definitely help with such a problem, though without anything more distinct in terms of exactly how the patent works, it’s still only a rumor for now. Other parts of the patent possibly point to it being a built-in part of the devices.
“The base unit is fixed in the inner case via a first damper, and the inner case is fixed in the outer case by a second damper.”
This could just be a way to prevent the CD driver (if it’s external) from vibrating too much and polluting the environment with noise, or it could be a way to reduce vibration in the actual console, but the rumors of the PS5 disc drive being detachable seem more plausible with this patent.
It was also reported that the detachable disc drive won’t be compatible with the current, digital edition PS5 which has no disc drive. The new detachable disc drive PS5 variant has been rumored to release in September, 2023 and apparently has been in production since 2020.
It’s being speculated that a PlayStation Showcase could happen in May 2023. If Sony is indeed planning a showcase (which is expected during the now cancelled E3 period), we could get an announcement about the new detachable disc drive PS5.
This is not it as Sony is supposedly also working on a Cloud Streaming device for the PS5 so it could be a plethora of new announcements at the next Sony Showcase event.
After more than 2 years, it seems like the PS5 shortage seems to be coming to an end. Sony hopes to ship more consoles this year and new PS5 variants seem to be the part of their long term plan. We will have to wait and see when the company confirms the existence of these variants in official capacity.
