The big drama yesterday came in the form of serious accusations leveled at Sony and the PS3 by the BBC. The British Broadcasting Corporation aired an edition of its consumer complaints show, Watchdog, that featured the so-called "Yellow Light of Death," a PS3 hardware failure that has apparently affected "thousands and thousands" of PS3s.
Today, the BBC has pushed the issue with a new article posted on its Web site, refuting Sony's six-page complaint letter and continuing to twist the knife with its allegations.
"Sony dislikes the term 'the yellow light of death,' since it implies a single fault is afflicting all consoles," claims the BBC. "It says the flashing yellow light is a 'non-specific fault indicator that can be triggered in a range of different circumstances.' Sony adds that the yellow light could indicate a problem caused by 'any one of a range of issues that may inevitably affect any complex item of consumer electronics.'
"So if there isn’t one single thing that’s causing thousands of machines to stop working, why does it appear that one single repair appears to get them working again?"
That last statement from the BBC, interestingly enough, is a lie. As we detailed yesterday, Watchdog did indeed try to fix eleven PS3s. Four of them are still inoperable, meaning that "one single repair" does not get them all working again.
The Watchdog report was quite pathetic, full of half-truths, outright lies and unfair accusations. Quite why the BBC is doing this is unclear. I'm all for giving Sony a hard time when it's deserved, but this appears to be, quite simply, a baseless and sustained attack on an issue that has not affected as many people as the BBC is claiming. I simply don't understand what the makers of Watchdog, or the corporation backing them up, is trying to achieve with this ham-fisted little campaign.
Contest:
11:40 AM on 09.18.2009
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I had a chuckle when a report on the VMAs this year talked about how Jack Black was dressed as a viking...
Big Bouncy Cocks.
It seems like ann robinsons huge pay check has kicked out the people who did the actual work. no its terrible. i mean why does watchdog need to have a studio audience?
Also, one of the people featured wanted his ps3 fixed so he can retrieve his secondary school leaving do photos. Who keeps there only copy of photos on there ps3? and why didnt he just take out the hard drive and put it in a mates ps3?
and why were the repairmen all american?
seriously i have so many questions about the "report"
I haven't watched the show, but do they say how many of these failures happen under warranty? Because you can, like, get another one free.
"Thanks for your email about the playstation 3. The thousands and thousands relate to the 12,500 PS3's Sony themselves say have failed with a yellow flashing light in the UK alone. I hope this answers your questions regarding the veracity of that fact.
Kind regards
Jon Hunt
kinda ignored everything else though
As for nationality of the repair people, if you live in Brooklyn, NY and want your Xbox360 fixed, your going to run into all Chinese guys, so lets not start insinuating conspiracy theories unless the Chinese are infiltrating the US as Xbox repair people.
While I do not know, there could be explanations for a large point of failure in a particular part of the world, warehousing issues, environmental issues, particular retailer could have received a bad shipment, multiple manufacturing plants and one had a bad batch, etc.
I think they did a story, perhaps puffed it a little, and I think people are taking it a little too much like an assassination attempt, when they simply are presenting an issue people were having, its that job of a watchdog to do. Sure they could have featured the Xbox, but honestly of all my friends that purchased the newer system, none have had theirs fail. And its the studio's choice who they do stories on. MS's having 50% failure rate (made up number) doesn't make a Sony 20% failure (also made up) acceptable.
The BBC must ask itself if this stance is worth it in the long run. Not only can they possibly lose one of it's popular programmes, but also they stand to lose a lot of credibilty from this. Despite being a huge corporation, being asinine to someone like Sony is a dangerous proposition, let's not forget Sony probably makes the cameras and equipment the BBC uses. They can easily stick a middle finger up at the BBC and support it's TV competitors (mainly digital) which can directly hurt the BBC. I'm with you Jim, I have no idea why they are doing this, except maybe idiotic stubbornness.
Yes, the YLOD does exists, but the BBC is is insinuating that it is a massive issue, yet if it was, wouldn't we, the gamers and PS3 owners, kick up a massive fuss on the net??
As far as many gaming news outlets are concerned, it is a minor issue that pops up sporadically and isn't consistent at all. In fact, a few sites have claimed that the PS3 is the most stable Playstation so far. Again, sorry to sound like a fanboy, but the BBC is painting the picture that the YLOD is something like the second coming of the RROD, but with a different name. This si simply not true, whilst issues have been reported, justifiably, with the ps3 breaking down, it has not been no where near the scale the BBC is claiming.
'Thousands of thousands' is not true at all, and we are talking about one country here, England (where I live), surely if this was the case, someone would use the joke of a legal system we have and file a British lawsuit against sony.
Again, yes issues do exist with the PS3 causing it to break down, but what the BBC is claiming seems to suggest they are stupidly stubborn and is throwing a hissy fit because they were wrong.
For shame, BBC.
For shame.
THE BBC WAS TROLLING ME, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
I think the main issue is that the consoles can be repaired but Sony do not repair PS3s for their owners, meaning all data is lost. That is the real shitter.
Incidentally YLoD is the PS3's RRoD, it just gets less coverage and is worse for the owner of the console.
But Mock The Week was bloody hilarious yesterday, so I don't know if I want to moan about the beeb. Hmm.
I really hope Sony sues the dogshit out of the BBC. Apparently, they didn't learn their lesson about fraudulent articles, when they got bent over the barrel the last time.
I rather hope Sony sues them in a very public manner... that might end up getting more press than the BBC original story did.
(and the press in general should be held more accountable - even my own TV station often airs local news that turns out to be incredibly wrong. The recently did a story on this poor couple and their 2 boys that were homeless because they'd moved to town expecting a job that never materialized. Donations poured in and it wasn't until much later that they found out that this couple had done this before and it was essentially a scam.)
Only somewhat true, you have a year warranty on your Ps3, and sony themselves fix it free of charge. They do fix it, hope this helps!!
However, I pay insurance on mine, so if, not when, it decides to die, I can change it for a new one, with out any hassle, and the insurance only costs me a fiver a month as well.
Why insurance? You may ask, I live near and with my nephews and nieces, who are all children, I am not letting them play on a macine I spent 320 pounds on (bout $550) only for them to spill food on it, drink, drop it or even fall on it or cause it to fall. The insurance covers accidental damage as well as faulty hardware.
That was rather sensible for me. On another subject...stupid fecking BBC. The Watchdog article couldn't have been any more baseless, pointless, & biased if it tried. I appreciate the issue of the warranty only being 12 months, but the rest of their drivvle, was just that....drivvle.
"12500 units in the U.K. alone"? They make it sound as if that's a big number to begin with. Out of the approaching 30million units sold, that's .042%, if you round up.
Let's say this mysterious and almost never heard of failure rate is enourmously higher around the world. Let's say the total failure rate is .1%!
Seriously, airplanes have a higher failure rate.
Already covered by Kaden to a point. The PS3 encrypts the Hard Drive contents based on the system board of the PS3. That drive work internally, and only internally on the Ps3 that formated the HD.
@ Mushman
Which brings the point of all data is lost. For YLOD Sony USA does not repair the users system. They swap unit for unit with a refurbished model. So everything for your PS3 is lost if you do not backup the system. It seems many who have had a bad Blu-Ray drive do get their own system back, but nobody I know so far who has the YLOD get's their own system back. even if they did they would get a new motherboard and then the HD contents is still lost.
@Kaden101, thats what someone did with my broken PS3 to save my files and it ended up screwing up the other console as well. Gamestation rock btw, they gave us a new PS3 and a replacement disc for the game that was stuck in the console.
Back on subject, I would love to see Sony publicly sue BBC and hey, maybe it'll set their reporters in check and hopefully result in a slightly more informative news channel!
I hope so. They would deserve no less.
Your maths is showing.
the 12500 units in the UK, let us assume is correct for the number of broken UK machines. Sony has not sold 30 Million PS# units in the UK. So the percentage of wonky UK units is not .042% You have to find the total number of sales for the UK to get the correct percentage of failure.
No I don't know the number. Yes, I'm sure the failure rate is a reasonable number.
http://www.playstatic.com/news/716
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/13/ps3-survives-108-straight-hours-in-a-sweatbox/
oh my, after a little google'ing (sorry bing) look what I found.
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/09/12/bbc-worldwide-peter-mercier/
Against this background:
BBC Worldwide’s digital sales and business development head Peter Mercier is leaving to be Microsoft’s content acquisitions and strategy senior director – the latest in the revolving HR door between the two companies.
…
BBCWW hired Mercier from MobiTV as head of mobile in 2007 before he got a wider digital role in ‘08. Ashley Highfield left as CEO of BBCWW’s Kangaroo JV last year. Microsoft’s UK online services group VP Chris Dobson went the other way to be BBCWW’s WVP and GM of global ad sales, leading BBC.com ad sales in particular; he later took two BBCWWers with him.
Rather than try to cover up the symbiotic relationship between the two organisations, wouldn’t it just be simpler if they merged them together now? At least then there wouldn’t be any pretensions of independence by the BBC Worldwide…
A legitimate complaint, but one that's easily remedied back a back up of the HDD, of course some people will not have this option, but for me it is not an issue.
It states clearly, on both the XMB system settings and the manual that you can and should back up the HDD, it is the consumers fault if they do not after reading this advice.
Good observation, however my calculations had that in mind. Yes, the .042% was the percentage of failures in comparison to all units sold, but the addition of my estimates is where I made the educated guess.
Using the wiki page for UK recent sales, as of yesterday incidentally, the percentage for UK failures rates is... wait for it... exactly .5%. Seeing as manufacturing discrepancies have not been discovered for different regions, this is a safe estimate to use for the total sales/units and failures.
So there ya have it. .5% total failure rate. 5 times my estimate, to my humiliation, but still within a reasonable range.
Still comparable to being under airplane failure rates, and closer to being equal to chance of dieing on an airplane.
On a related note, my PS3 has frozen maybe 3 times since I bought it last year (which was remedied by holding the off 'button' for a few seconds), and not once have I gotten this "yellow light of death".
If you want hardware failure, you should have seen my (original) Xbox after 4 years of usage (not a fanboy, I'm just saying I treated my xbox very improperly) :P