PS3 Yellow Light of Death?!!!

[saif]

I thought that the "name" of this gives the game away as a bit of scaremongering tbh. The "...of death" is a Windows and Xbox phrase isn't it?
I am sure PS3s do break down and it is bloody annoying if it does, but as far as I have heard, SCEE, in an amazing (for them, it is) show of competence, deal with it quite well. If the 0.5% failure rate is true, then that is pretty good - there are quite a few components to go wrong so there will always be a rate of failure. As far as I am aware, ignoring the elephant in the room, the PS2 *design* is sound - components will fail.
The Guardian games blog covered this a fair bit and over there (it is a pretty rubbish blog btw) many mentioned that there was some MS fishiness to it all. Who knows? Timing seemed a bit inconvenient as the new version of PS3 came out. That would be great marketing for a competitor.

[JP]

It's always annoying when stuff you've paid a lot of money for dies early but there will unfortunately be a failure rate for any consumer electronics product.

Our launch PS3 died and it was nearly a year out of warranty. It happened at the weekend so Sony just sent a courier round with a new one on Monday morning. It was about 36 hours from breaking to being replaced for free and it would have been quicker if it didn't happen on a Saturday.

I wasn't expecting it to be as so long out of warranty but it cost nothing for the replacement which was a nice surprise.

I hav to admit than given a choice between paying Sony to repair it and paying those knobs on Watchdog to fix it, I'd much rather pay Sony the money as the people that Watchdog paid to do it seemed to be generally confused and the whole thing.

I'd forgotten but I'm actually in that Continuos Play thing so I'd get another replacement within 24 hours if it do wrong again.

[charlesr]

Note that their "oven" fix seemed pretty temporary with many of the ones they "fixed" earlier no longer working by the time it aired. Much like the towel trick with the 360 - only works for a while. The lack of mention of MS's figures shows the show was only there for sensationalism.

[Brad]

And Iain Lee is just being a tit. You can't be on the MS payroll and then say Hey, I know I'm on the MS payroll but I AM NOT TEH BIASED!!!" and expect that to be accepted. He is no more qualified to comment than any fanboy on any forum anywhere in the world. In fact he's less qualified because MS pay him money.

[abigsmurf]

Watchdog is a horribly sensationalist program that actively annoys me.

People who get the cheapest building/plumbing/car repair jobs they can possibly fine then wonder why a shoddy job gets done.

"massive wide scale problems" that affect maybe 100 people out of hundreds of thousands. Simple mistakes, hold ups and other misc. Problems that occasionally occur in even the best companies being shown to be commonplace and a sign that the company doesn't care about its customers. Not to mention all the issues that could be easily rectified if customers confirmed their receipts/booking info.

Sleazy tabloid journalism without any of the balance the BBC is known for.

[eastyy]

well had no problems with my ps3....and had my xbox replaced about 3 Times that speaks volumes to me

[Daragon]

Only time I've experienced a problem was when the console stopped reading disks for some reason. Had to reset the console to "out of the box" settings and it worked fine.

Lost all my save games as I forgot to backup, but a VERY small price to pay compared to M$ and me having a minor heart attack every time I switch my 360 on, wondering whether today is the day my year old elite dies - my launch day premium met a sticky end at the end of last year

[S3M]

The lack of any mention of MS in the feature shows you how crap it was. 360's have a 100% fail rate, it's not a case of if just when, the more you play it the more likely it is to break quickly.

The biggest problem with the current generation of console is that the cooling systems for these consoles just isn't up to scratch, as they just get to hot, a problem that if they don't fix will effect the next generation as well.

There's something Watchdog didn't mention and the less we see of Iain Lee the better.

[Brad]

The problem is that this is an issue that many of us here are very much aware of so we know that the Watchdog program was speaking garbage. But what about the news or features the BBC gives us regarding things that we aren't clued up on? How much of that is also crap? We don't know.

[saif]

The failure/return rate of the PS3 is supposedly average for consumer electronics.
Most of my friends have one, not one has had a problem. That is the same for all games machines that I *personally* know of except one PSP of mine.

That does not suggest a "cooling system problem", that suggests a general QA issue on isolated cases. This is not a design problem, it is a component problem.

I am not sure Watchdog need to mention the 360 but it would make the piece a lot better for consumers as, if the thrust is to be believed, if you want to play games as a normal consumer, you should not get a ps3 as it has problems. If I saw that and then bought a 360 and it broke down, I'd be very annoyed. I'd be annoyed if I bought a wii and it broke down too but that would be a lot less likely.

[charlesr]

The problem is that this is an issue that many of us here are very much aware of so we know that the Watchdog program was speaking garbage. But what about the news or features the BBC gives us regarding things that we aren't clued up on? How much of that is also crap? We don't know.