Overheating, Lag, Burnt USB: PS5 Kicked Out of Fighting Game Tournaments

Summary

A decade-long tradition of PlayStation hosting fighting game tournaments is being rewritten. Due to persistent hardware defects in the PS5 that seriously affect competitive fairness, multiple tournament organizers have officially announced they are dropping Sony's console in favor of Xbox Series X as the official tournament device. The PS5 has long had a poor reputation in professional fighting game events: overheating causes increased input latency, and the controls feel sluggish compared to PC; top events like EVO have repeatedly suffered from burnt USB ports and malfunctioning fight sticks. During the 2025 EVO Japan finals for Guilty Gear Strive, a player's cable was burnt mid-match, forcing organizers to restart the console and causing a long schedule delay. Top players like EVO champion PunkDaGod have repeatedly complained that having thousands of hours of practice decided by hardware issues is disrespectful to competitors. Some events previously tried switching to PC, but high costs and multi-device debugging made it difficult to scale. The 2027 Texas tournament has also followed suit, signaling a potential full shift in hardware standards for fighting game competitions. This incident not only exposes the PS5's reliability shortcomings in competitive settings, but also sparks reflection on the console tournament ecosystem: when hardware becomes the deciding factor…