Some PS5 Digital Editions Are Shipping with Blu-ray Drives

As long as it's not the other way around, it's all good

I would have been LIVID if my digital came in as physical!! Not a “nice surprise” for those of us who prefer the cleaner design and lighter weight of disc less (not to mention less noise)

I don't know why, but my mind always jumps to skepticism when it comes to things like this. You could quite easily swap out the console, repackage it and open it again on video to "prove" they packaged the wrong console. Reddit karma and the chance of a viral tweet makes people go to great lengths. 😂

Ill be pissed if my disc version turns up with no disc drive.

Yo. This happened to me. I didn't know this was a thing.

@2cents
There wouldn’t be more noise with the disc versions unless you were using the disc drive. Which you aren’t apparently.
I do understand how, if you aren’t going to ever use the disc drive, you might want a cleaner look I guess. Still, “livid” is a bit strong, I’m sure you could sell it for the full disc price then save a 100 when rebuying the disc less. As inconvenient as that might be and as much as you might not have a use for 100 lol.

But what about the warranty ?

I swear if my PS5 doesn't have a Disc Drive, I'm gonna riot.

That’s pretty awesome, a disc version for $400! As long as they didn’t specifically want the Digital Edition for its sleeker design.

@JapaneseSonic

Same here bud.

My luck in life is terrible. So one of two things will happen to me.

1. I get a digital version in a physical edition box.

2. I get the right one and it’s dead on arrival.

Keeping my fingers crossed. The 27th can’t get here fast enough.

@naruball I was thinking exactly the same thing

I think the people likely to be upset are the ones that paid for the one with a drive.

I bet I’m the one that gets the digital version inside a disc version box

@TheRedComet you forget the 3rd option, where everything goes right and then, just as you unpack it, you die of excitement/disappointment (at things not going wrong)

Better not be the other way around

Have to admit, the black packaging for the digital version is pretty snazzy.

@thefourfoldroot nowadays people are "livid" over the silliest things.

IGN have been saying they've seen metrics that the disc less version accounts for less than 1% of stock. Guessing they didn't make enough to fill orders so they've upgraded some peoples orders.

Prefer my digital edition. I’ve also had zero issues since launch that most people with disc versions have been complaining about. Also, interested to know how warranty works since you technically don’t have the right console version

Lmao at “livid” at receiving the better console.

The weight of a box that sits under the TV is vital.

😂

The digital only hipsters are hilarious

@DeepSpace5D exactly, this wouldn't be a nice surprise for me. I deliberately ordered the digital version because its symmetrical design looks better to me than the disc console. It's nothing to do with cost and buying the cheaper one, I bought the one I wanted so if I got a disc console instead I would be pretty unimpressed!

My only concern about this would be proof-of-purchase needed for warranty claims, when you go to show Sony your receipt (if you have any need to file a claim under your limited warranty) it is going to be for a Disc-less console and they most likely won't honor the warranty. I would be contacting PS Direct and ask about how to handle the situation. Maybe they can send a receipt for the disc version.

@Medic_Alert "Secondly even if the wrong console was picked up the packaging inside all has to be wrong too to accommodate the mistake."

Or, the person was packing all the correct items for the disc version and grabbed the wrong box?

Not sure if all of these are true or not, but my guess would be somebody delivered the wrong boxes to the people packing them, not that people had the correct boxes and put the wrong consoles in them. People are much more likely to be looking at the items that go in the box than tiny writing on the box, they'll ASSUME they have the correct box but CHECK the contents.

This won't happen with Xbox, black and white boxes.

How many mistakes can they make? Now I'm expecting someone to receive an Xbox series S instead of the PS5 digital

@Medic_Alert Wouldn't it make sense that the serial number gets printed on the box AFTER they put the PS5 in it? I can't imagine there are a bunch pf pre-stamped boxes sitting in a room with serial numbers on them and every time a PS5 comes off of the assembly line people have to run around trying to find the box with the matching serial number?

"building the two models side by side."

Do they box them were they manufacture them? I would assume the two PS5 models are manufactured in different locations and the boxes are brought to the room where they are boxed after they are manufactured. But not right after while the glue is drying, several hours or days later. So the boxes all come in shipped together after being printed by the same publishing plant, then an actual person brings the boxes to the proper room. PS5 are put in the boxes, the boxes are then stamped w/ the serial number on the machine that was put in the box. But nobody is checking what the box says as everyone assumes it is the correct box.

What do you buy?

Someone 'literally shaking' because they got a different SKU of a games console?

They need to really look at their life if their mind reacts like that to something like this.

Not mine but I feel fortunate to have gotten one at all. None of my colleagues or friends were able to secure a ps5.

@Medic_Alert I don't doubt it's not real, in that, there's a reason to believe it's not a mistake at all. Remember we heard that there were very few digital units compared to physical units on offer? It seems to me like they, for whatever reason, either underestimated demand for the digital units, or had some sort of problem in the tooling or something to get them off the line.

It's entirely conceivable that it was faster/cheaper for production purposes to just crank out extra disc models and shove them in the boxes as discless units to make up for demand, thus converting more production lines to a single large batch rather than two assembly lines.

Meaning they might not "accidentally" be putting disc units in digital boxes, but might be intentionally doing so to keep production capacity maximized - the only difference is a disc drive that probably costs them no more than $4-5 wholesale, a different panel mold, and a different foam/cardboard insert in the box. I could easily see a scenario where losing an extra $6 per console for the disc drive actually saves $6.03 per console by combining production lines and reducing the parts runs to only one mold for a portion of production. Just during the launch rush. Few customers will complain about a free upgrade, and they can streamline their production to an extent. Or just fulfill preorders for digitals that were taken without available discless units to fulfill them.

Not saying that definitely happened, but it's definitely not inconceivable - especially if this starts showing up more.

@2cents

I'm guessing the extra hard drive space you received for free, which will in near future cost a small fortune, might have helped you behind less livid.

If that's what gets you livid, you probably need to see a therapist

@NEStalgia So you think people are purposefully putting disc PS5 into discless PS5 boxes b/c the place where they are boxing them ran out of discless PS5 to put in the box and that the order to do so came all the way down from Sony HQ?

I can imagine a disgruntled employee doing a few on purpose, but I can't imagine anyone in charge at any level giving the go ahead to do this. Seems like a firable offense. The problem is while it's nice for the person - accept for a few crackpots on here - it makes Sony looks foolish, like it has monkeys running things. So I think it's bad exposure for them. If they want to give away disc PS5 in discless PS5 boxes then make a marketing campaign out of it like those Burger King ads. Doing it on the sly just makes them look incompetent.

@Medic_Alert So you don't have any explanation of how this screw-up might have happened, you are simply sticking with "fake news"?

Well I can't argue with that.

@Medic_Alert

Confirmed? Cause if they sending out hard drive models without extra hard drive, it is some strange hybrid, and would indicate a conscious decision somewhere.

If this is case, and we've seen before with AMD GPU's being released with extra memory and higher cu counts being packaged under lower model gpu name, because there was shortage of alternatives, it would indicate that they didn't maybe have sufficient shells for digital editions... Or someone was on crack

@KiranKara78 I think you’re getting Xbox mixed up with PlayStation, the Series S/X have different storage space

@Medic_Alert I don't know, I think Occam's razor would say it's a whole lot easier for someone to have grabbed a stack of the wrong boxes then for more than 1 person on the internet to be reporting the same occurrence of a disc version in a discless box.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you if it was only 1 person, but if there are so few discless versions out there then where are people even getting these boxes from?

I did a deeper dive. Google had nothing accept a link to this webpage, and twitter had only the 2 guys. I think the first guy was legit, possibly the 2nd guy who had a pic that said "me too" might have faked it, only had a twitter account starting in Feb 2020. First guy was 2011 and nothing about his feed made me think he was a lying piece of garbage.

So I'm sticking w/ box mix-up, but admittedly this could all have been a ruse. Ruse is my 2nd choice. I'm guessing Sammy or someone will update us if more info turns up in the future. Usually whenever someone lies like this they tell the truth once people stop caring about them to get themselves back in the limelight. And if it was a stack of wrong boxes a few more people will speak up eventually.

@rjejr You have 3M orders for disc versions, you have 2M orders for discless. You planned on/underproduced only 1.5M orders for discless. Your assembly line is backed up beyond compare and having two different parts bins, assembly steps and molding inventories to make 2 different SKUs means splitting up part of the line and running them separately, and likely increasing the staffing to pull it off, cutting output by 1k a day. Or you just pump out as much of 1 SKU as possible and load them in the lower end SKU boxes, sell them at slightly higher cost to you because it's cheaper than dividing your assembly line, staffing, training, and running more logistics hauls for 2 body molds......yeah that order could come from above to make up the shortfall with minimal disruption on the floor.

@NEStalgia So, Sony is willing to ship out 500,000 $500 units for only $400 a pop rather than just tell people "Sorry, we ran out."? And deal w/ all the backlash that entails from them being run by monkeys?

I'm sticking w/ a stack of a dozen boxes wound up in the wrong room.

I mean, lets say it's only 6 got shipped in the wrong box. Is shipping 6 discless versions really going to make up for an apparent huge shortfall they had w/ underproducing the discless version?

Can't see it. Wrong box just seems like too easy of an explanation.

What order do you think the serial numbers go on the devices and boxes? 1 sheet of paper w/ both the box and console stickers that get slapped on each at the same time would explain the mishap. Can't imagine the boxes are manufactured w/ the serial printed on them, and having boxes printed w/ the serial number which is then put on the console seems backwards.

Who knows, maybe the other guy is right and it's a lie. I'll believe a lie over - let's purposely put the wrong console in the wrong box to meet our shipment quota. Order cancelations are par for the course.

@2cents

Yeah you're right. Forgot that for a moment lol

It's a bizarre situation for sure.

Either it's due to shortage of the relevant shells, it's fake news or the overworked Chinese sweat shop workers are starting to crack up

@rjejr Those units don't cost $100 difference though. At most $20, and in all reality probably about $6. They're taking a bigger loss on the digital because they know they're recoup that money through locked-in digital sales on it. They're the same unit that cost roughly the same amount to make. The disc drive cost is a few bucks tops at that volume, the costs of maintaining two lines and body moulds costs more than the disc drive. So we're talking about a system they're losing probably $200+ per unit sold, in general, and instead losing $210 to get them out the door to convert that to content sales revenue faster.

It could well be wrong box, but we don't know how widespread it is - a few internet instagrammers doesn't make up the world. Could just be a mixup, but it's absolutely not unfathomable that it's a logistics intent.

Most of the time you'd get the serial stickers in pairs and put them on together, but it's also possible they're doing them in batches and lining them up down the line with the labels on the boxes first and a quick verification they match (or a Guangdong level of verification, anyway....) as they box it.

But I found it odd since the beginning they were shorting available units for digital...that didn't add up. Especially when that's the SKU that represents the greatest immediate loss on the quarterlies, but also the longer term highest net. I'd think they'd be shoving as many digitals as they can out there. It grands them monopoly retail power after that. Unless they don't want to sustain the quarterly loss and purposely held back, I'm guessing something went wrong with the bodies or production and they didn't actually have the intended allotment at launch.

@TheRedComet or 3, you boot it up and the xbox OS comes up 😂
3 would be the worst option for me. Id rather have the ps5 dead on arrival lol

What's funny is chances are high they won't return it for a swap to the correct version, but if it was the other way round where they ordered the disc version and only got the digital in the box, they would be right at their doorstep demanding a swap out.
Warranty is going to be fun for them, if it fails they will take it back and the shop will say sorry you bought the digital on the receipt, this is incorrect model for warranty.

And if they are fake pics and staged, they don't realize possible implications it can cause. Sony management could head to factory and pull all workers into meetings and discipline them. If fake they better not cause any warehouse workers being fired for fake news.

@NEStalgia But shouldn't the number of preorders they allowed reflect the known allotment, disc and discless. How did more digital get ordered than they expected? Shouldn't that not be possible? Or why would there be a finite amount of preorders in the first place, if but to account for how many are actually made (or about to be)?

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something. I don't know much about this.

@NEStalgia The discless version being broken during production more than the disc version seems a bit odd but I suppose it could have happened. The original tweet said he got it from the Sony store so those could have been first and switched to get the orders out.

But really though, say they ran out of discless versions and wanted to send the disc version out in it's place, eat the $6 or whatever, why not just send them in the proper disc box? Why bother putting a disc version in a discless box and look stupid? Why not just ship out the disc version in the disc box w/ a letter saying "Sorry, we ran out of the discless version, please take this $500 console for only $400 instead as a token of our appreciation."? Why switch the box? I don't see anything gained by projecting incompetence.

@rjejr It would seem pretty strange if Sony were to stop projecting incompetence this late in the launch, wouldn't it?

It could all be screw ups, but it was suspicious that they had so few available of what is likely to be their highest profit console over time. Combined with the swaps, it makes some sense they could plug a few overage holes since they were pretty much fulfilling these things as they went out the door. But I wouldn't doubt any direction of screwup in this "me-too" launch of theirs. W'ere still waiting for the OS to arrive, after a...

@zupertramp assuming they had a similar schedule as xbox, they only started making them around the time they opened preorders, so the allotments reflected expected supply at that time... And it was already low for some reason. They may have massively underestimated demand.... Or something wasn't going according to plan. Could be as simple as an order of 1m body panels without the humpback were delivered with the humpback! There's so many vendors for parts supply for this stuff. The plastic former would be a whole other vendor delivering palets of the panels.

All I see is a PS5 with a disc slot, a box for the digital version, and a lack of journalistic investigation.

@2cents Or sell it, buy your correct digital edition and pocket the $100 👍

@rjejr @zupertramp Having finally received and opened my ps5(s), I can now see how this either happened by accident or as a fake. The outer box is merely a sleeve. The console is packed in the entirely unmarked inner white box, and the serial numbers are on that white box, showing through a cutout on the outer sleeve. I think ps4 was the same, but i forgot about that.

So either the factory dropped the boxes into the wrong sleeves (but you'd think direct sales would notice the scan/activation of the wrong sku) or the fakes just swapped the inner boxes with the outer sleeves.

Thus i doubt it was by design after all, unless they ran out of sleeves.

Interesting, though, that it happened, rather unusually either for corporate screw ups or for youtube clicks, in the customers favor with no reports so far against the customers favor.

I hope the stand is the right one.

@2cents yeah cos disc drives are notoriously noisy when they don’t have discs in arent they

Haha count your lucky stars if this has happened to you. I should be alright as I'm collecting mine from my local store. Just hope it's not a faulty one!

@2cents livid? Really? Give me a break.

Making me panic now... I've got the disk version coming on Thursday and I'm worried its gonna be the digital. Haha specially after just spending £180 on 3 games!!

@get2sammyb you had me intrigued then by your headline, i actually thought Sony had made some models with Blu Ray drives in for a minute, turns out they are standard models with UHD Blu Ray drives in.

@NEStalgia Well there's incompetence b/c people are incompetent, and then there's "let's do this thing that makes us look incompetent when there really is no reason to do it" incompetence.

I do agree with the rush job, too many things look half baked, like taking the Switch lead on how to implement a web browser. And several, not one like Zelda, several as in HFW, Sack boy and Spider-Man also being on PS4, so they probably didn't even need PS5 out yet but they had to b/c MS did. Internal 2nd SSD not working, PS5 games not running on external. Or storing on external. That part doesn't even make sense typing it now.

So, not ready for prime time. But that still doesn't justify putting it in the wrong box on purpose. 😉

@NEStalgia Thanks for the hands on experience. You didn't actually order 1 of each did you? The (s) confused me.

I'm sticking with my box screwup theory then. Ok sleeve if you want to get technical about it, I know who I'm dealing with. 😉

I'll believe the 2nd story is a fake attention grabber but why buy both unless you were planning a comparison? And if that guy does a comparison now everyone would know he just switched boxes, too obvious. 🤷

Though it is the internet, everything is fake, even elections. 😝

Anytime someone says they're "literally SHAKING", you know they're full of s***. It's so cringey.

@Rrrob did I say loud when’s there’s no disc in? Are you dense?? Why would someone assume that

I hope when you open your PS5 box you find an old xbox 360 full of cockroaches. 😈

@Mpquikster unfortunately there are many people out there who just do things like that for attention. That's why I'm off any social media platforms as it's just attention seeking.

@rjejr Yeah, at this point it seems more like a fake or an easy factory screw up. The sleeves are probably packed entirely separately to the white box consoles. Probably just a pallet went to the wrong room of the wrong one. Or the internet people just swapped boxes.

Yeah, I had 2 come in, one isn't mine of course. But I did get to check out both boxes. Both the sleek monolith of gaming, and the Hunchback of Tokyo.

@NEStalgia Thanks for clearing up the (s). So did you get the hunchback or the monolith? I'd bet hunchback but it would be a small bet. Maybe you can switch sleeves? 😉

I've been sick for a week, probably not covid related, I'm going to take a nap.

The problem as I see it with the wrong boxes idea, is that in manufacturing the boxes would go through a barcode scanner to ensure its the right box. I doubt they do it differently and just put it in the box and stack it ready for delivery.

I'd be so pissed if it was the opposite