Considering every 360 owner I know has experienced the red ring of death at least once, if not multiple times, I always thought out of all the consoles I own the first to break would be one of my 360s. Not so! It is my backwards compatible PS3 that broke - just after I did a system update. The disc icon no longer showed up in the XMB and I was unable to play any disc-based games. After playing Persona 3 and Cross Edge constantly the last few weeks, this was my worst nightmare.
After doing extensive research on the internet (ie: reading various forums) and speaking to a couple of people, it appears it is a common occurrence that 60 gig PS3s break after system updates. This has caused me to come to the conclusion that it is a conspiracy by Sony to destroy all backwards compatible PS3s. I have no idea what Sony's ultimate plan is, all I know is that I have been a victim of this widespread destruction.
Fortunately, it was only broken for five days. We had a console technician come and fix it, which only took 20 minutes and $170. We didn’t go through Sony because it would have taken too long and cost over $300. The guy that fixed my PS3 had already fixed four others the same day with another two after mine which is more evidence towards Sony breaking the PS3s with system updates.
Also, he took our PS2 to be modified to play NTSC games - so now I will be able to get all the games that were never released in PAL. Unfortunately he said the only thing I can do to stop my PS3 from breaking again is to not play for more than 3 hours at a time to give it a break, which is basically impossible for me to do once I'm involved in a game :(
Anyway instead of playing Star Ocean on 360, I spent most of the time playing various PSN games with my boyfriend. After this he finally agreed to let me buy him a PS3 :D It is his 30th birthday tomorrow and the perfect present! The problem was we went to every single shop in the area and they were sold out everywhere. Luckily, he found someone selling a brand new 40 gig PS3 on one of the forums he goes on and they only lived half an hour away. So today we went and bought the PS3 and a 320 gig hard drive. He only has the same PSN games as me at the moment but I will buy a couple of games for him in the next week or two.
Now we have two PS3s and two 360s set up next to each other and lots of awesome gaming to do!
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I really hope Sony will release a better BC PS3 soon. :/
Also, That's a pretty awesome gaming room.
I hope that's sarcasm.
My old console went to shit not long ago, refused to boot, but I've heard a lot of stories about the Blu-Ray drive packing in - seems to be the most common problem with PS3s.
Also, $170 for 20 minutes work?! Doesn't that alarm you at all?
I'm also in IT and I took out the HDD hooked up to my computer formatted it and tried again...and it worked...
Definitely not something you should pay 170 bucks for cause its pretty simple.
Thank god for Best Buy Warranty. Fuck Sony Customer Service.
Bitches told me to buy one of there 20 dollar HDMI cables to fix the problem.
I still have a launch 60GB PS3 and I've often run it for 7 or 8 hours with no problems at all. We also have a semi-backward compatible 80GB model (the early unit) that has also been running for long hours with no problems. Both are well ventilated, but I think it's just a matter of simple "bad luck" in that many of the early 60GB models do seem to be failing. :(
It's a matter of luck.
If it's the laser or ventilation though you have a bigger problem.
However I'm running out of space (it's a 40GB [i.e. not enough], 3 GB left). I am thinking of getting a new PS3 or just another hard drive, but I want to carry over everything, save data, game data and my account. I know I can transfer the account and save data, but I'm unsure about the game data as it doesn't say copy.
Also I did backup some saves on a pen drive from before so I didn't lose all of my data. I recommend doing that periodically just in case. It never hurts to be prepared for the worst. Yea I know some games don't allow you to copy the save game file, but enough do to make it worth while.
The external USB HDD is handy to have anyways for backing up and to store movies/music on. You can watch movies direct from the USB HDD and can play music, you can also back up most gamesaves... though you can't play ingame music from the external USB drive for some reason (nor can you play play games from the external drive).
@calkulon and masterninja the lasers cost over AU$100 and they aren't guaranteed to be new. It was easier to have the technician come and fix it, plus it has warranty. My bf initially thought the issue was corrupt files so backed up everything and then formatted the HDD and did a system restore. This didn't fix it because it was the laser that was broken.
I just couldn't believe it broke because it is only two years old - it seems most of them break between two and three years but there isn't much to do to stop it from happening, just luck like what some of you said. I'm glad I didn't lose any of my saves or I would have gone crazy. Might start backing everything up every few months.
M$, and apparantly Sony are going to need some class action lawsuits before they get their shit together with these lethal (and mandatory) firmware updates.
I too had this problem, here's my fix for what a non-sony tech and sony support said was a dead laser.
Before you send it away to be fixed try this: Buy yourself a cheap-ass lens cleaning cd/dvd and some cleaning fluid (I used cd cleaning stuff, but any alchohol based stuff should work). Spray the brushes on cleaning disk with some of the cleaning fluid, stuff it into your ps3 and let it do it's cleaning magic. Now, just to be safe give it a few minutes to dry and tada! your "broken" laser is fixed!