More PS4 Users Experience Hardware Issues; 360 1-Star Reviews On Amazon.com & Climbing
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It seems to me this will be a series of posts, please read Part I of our in-depth chronicling of the hardware issues plaguing the PS4: http://mspoweruser.com/cheaper-ps4-experiencing-hardware-issues-already/
Well I must congratulate Sony for copying Microsoft so successfully. In an effort to emulate some of the successes of the Xbox 360, Sony has included their own version of the RROD (Red Ring of Death) in the PS4, let me introduce to you the Blue Light of Death (BLOD). The difference between the RROD and BLOD, is the BLOD is appearing immediately or only after a few hours of use, pointing to bad components/build quality, while the Xbox 360 had heating issues, which caused problems over time. On top of that, Sony’s rating for the PS4 is plummeting on Amazon, two days back the PS4 had a 4.5 rating on Amazon.com, toady the rating has dropped to 3.5 stars. Generally when you looks at the overall reviews you want to sees a decreasing cascade (upside down pyramid) through the star ratings. Most number of 5 star reviews, then slightly less 4 star reviews, then even less 3 star reviews, and obviously very little 1 star reviews. Now the PS4 on the hand has an hour-glass shaped review breakdown; 600 5 star ratings and over 360 1-star ratings. This means nearly 50% of their overall ratings are 2-star or below! Reading through the rating many users are complaining of hardware issues, BLOD being frequent among them. Also being reported by users are HDMI problems, it seems the issue originally reported by Kotaku is not isolated.
Social media is also buzzing and complaining about PS4 hardware issues, just take a look at twitter. The hashtag #PS4Broken is trending. Is speculated the extra $100 would be well worth to ensure build quality, I think this is turning out to be quite true. In an effort to compete on price it seems Sony had a much more relaxed quality control system, which ironically is going to cost them much more in the end.
If the above wasn’t bad enough, people are also saying a firmware issue is causing software problems in games, the only thing the PS4 was supposed to be good at. EA originally posted the 1.50 PS4 firmware was causing issues in some games before pulling the post.
Brad Sams over at Neowin has a very similar piece and I suspect mainstream news articles on this will be coming out Monday. This launch is turning out to be a disaster for Sony and I think this was a critical test for them to stay relevant in the next decade going forward.
