Beats (PSN): Stopped working after v1.17

[Jotari84]

Beats is a PSN game, music/rhythm in the general family of games like Guitar Hero. I had been able to play it successfully on my Retroid Pocket 5 (Android) and Steam Deck (Linux), then it stopped. I reverted to v1.17 on the RP5 and it worked again; I have not yet managed to revert on the SD.

The game has ~15 built-in songs to choose from; it’s also supposed to read your music from the memory card so you can play the game with your own tunes. After v1.17, the game advances to the music-selection and difficulty-selection screen as expected, then the icon spins as if the game is preparing, but just returns to the music-selection screen. No error message, no crash, just doesn’t play.

Another feature of the game is the ability to mix loops to create and record your own takes (like Beaterator). That seems to work fine.

I’ve tried the US, European, and Asian releases of the game, and they all have the same problem.