No, I’m not talking about an inability to evacuate my stomach of waste via my arse, it is in fact the second return of a console… and it’s not my Xbox360.
Unfortunately my second Sony Playstation 3 went somewhat tits up on March 23rd 2008 whilst playing the Japanese release of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. The error itself isn’t a Blu-Ray drive error, an error which has plagued the majority of Playstation 3 returns, including my first Playstation 3. The error is actually to do with the graphics processor of the console, an unusual error in that I’ve not actually heard of a Playstation 3 going wrong in relation to the graphics and nor had the help desk at Sony when I rang them (and unlike the first time they weren’t as professional or polite, Grrr.)
I was playing GT5p with my friend, Lee, when graphical errors became apparent on the console. The errors were actually a red flag immediately and I knew it wasn’t a game error, but a console error as it was a carbon copy of those that I encountered on my Xbox360 before it keeled over and died a GPU related death.
With that in mind I decided to try and push it again to see if I could replicate the error and whilst I couldn’t, I also didn’t really push it beyond upscaling DVD’s (which I would hazard is handled by The Cell anyway) and whilst nothing skipped I thought it better to be safe than sorry, especially with the number of games coming out this year that I want to play and sods law says it would be the first of those games I wanted to play to be the final straw.
I’d heard jokes that Playstation3′s would start failing once they were out of warranty in a typical Sony manner, but I ignored these. It was only when I looked up when the Playstation 3 was released (as mine is a launch model – or at least my first PS3 was, but this was a 60gb replacement which I would hazard was from the same period of time) and low and behold… March 23rd 2007. My Playstation 3 had died at 2 am March 23rd 2008, TWO HOURS out of warranty. Thankfully Sony weren’t going to let me down there and have accepted the console back, unfortunately they no longer carry stock of 60gb units since removing them for the much inferior (and less reliable) 40gb models, so it’s now a case of waiting it out for however long it takes to receive my beloved Playstation 3 back so I can play some more DVD’s and media as well as the odd game – I guess my purchase of Everybody’s Golf: World Tour will have to wait for now… I suppose it’s for the best, though I’m betting the OcUK lot will have stopped playing it by then.
The console, much like my previous one, was picked up in a carrier bag, no cables, no controllers and handed to the courier who collected it. I held hope that it may be an on the door swap (the last one was) but despite my hopes all I got was a signature computer thrust in my face with the name “Mooon” on it (come on, who has three ‘o’s in
their surname connected?) to which I duly signed and waved goodbye to Playstation 3 number two. With the PS3 I’ve left a letter written explaining to the technician who’ll be looking at it what went wrong (as the guy on the phone was a bit of a tool) as well as a .jpg on the Playstation 3′s Hard-Drive of a mock-up I created of the error in Photoshop. It’s not identical, but it’s similar, and you can see it to the side. The actual error was worse and completely visible from top to bottom with more vertical lines. It was also evident on the XMB and other games before someone claims it was a graphics error on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.
Wow, you are quite severely unlucky with your Playstations!
Loving the new look of the site dude, and glad that Sony still dealt with you even though you were just out of Warranty, let’s hope your all back up and running soon!
Let me know what you think of HSG5 I am tempted to make a purchase if I can find it cheapish.
Yeah, it’s a freak fault from the looks of it, just one of those things. Thankfully they dealt with it almost effortlessly (the guy on the phone wanted me to say it could have been my TV’s fault [duh!] or cable – it wasn’t) and then he claimed I didn’t live where I do as ‘it’s not on the system’.
Bit of a farce. Took 5 minutes last time, took 30 minutes this time.
Thankfully (or hopefully) the new one will work longer than the last two.
Hope it’s returned to you as soon as possible. Having just purchased a PS3, I hope to never go through the replacement/repair process. I’m already on my third replacement console from Microsoft and have a feeling it won’t be my last. Also, you mention that the 40gb PS3′s are more unreliable compared to their 60gb counterpart, could you elaborate as I’m curious.
When Sony stopped production of its 60gb models (we never got the 80gb models in Europe) we were left with the 40gb models only, however it seemed a lot of people on the forums I frequent (Overclockers.co.uk – large console section) a lot of people were having problems with Playstation 3′s and almost all of them were 40gb models.
The errors all seemed to be the same problem, Blu-Ray drive errors. This wasn’t a surprise to some that Sony were having drive problems, they’ve always had them and have plagued them from day one such as Playstation 1′s needing to be turned upside down to work and Playstation 2′s scratching discs beyond repair with faulty lasers. With Blu-Ray being new technology it came as no surprise that they had failures, but the vast majority came from the 40gb models.
My friend works at GAME, which is the European division of Electronics Boutique/EBGames and she was also quick to mention that she was suddenly taking a lot of Playstation 3′s back (when before she never took any). Looking about on the Sony forums and Playstation 3 forums it would seem it’s not a small batch, but actually more widespread than people imagined.
I don’t want to blow the numbers out of proportion, but the failures would appear to be higher than Sony are willing to say (and mainly the 40gb units which use cheaper components than the 60gb models), but a lot lower than Xbox360′s were at launch. It now seems that whilst the new Falcon Xbox360′s have sorted the issues with RRoD, Sony have actually messed up and are having problems; talking to my friend last night when she came around she said she was still taking more Playstation 3′s (40gb) than Xbox360′s (Falcon) by a long way and that it’s been that way since the new year.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it though, the only problem is Sony aren’t offering the 3-year warranty Microsoft did, which is why I panicked when my Playstation 3 went pear shaped and got onto them as soon as possible as mine was a March 23rd (launch day, UK) model.
The reason my swap is taking so long is because 60gb’s aren’t manufactured anymore and Sony didn’t keep enough stock, they now have to fix them or send out refurbs. As they are manufacturing 40gbs, if yours goes wrong you will get the same fantastic treatment I got the first time my 60gb model failed (when they were still being manufactured), as a courier comes to pick your broken model up they drop off a brand-new one, so it’s much better than the sad situation you’ve had with Microsoft.
Hope that clears it up. There are no official numbers for the fails as of yet, but it’s no coincidence that on a number of Pro-Sony forums in Europe and United States, independent forums and my friend in retail are all saying the same thing.
Great information. I have yet to browse the PS3 forums so this is all new to me.