Blue Light of Death Plagues PlayStation 4

jones_supa writes "A classic game console freezing problem seems to affect the newest generation too. It has been found out that a bunch of Sony PlayStation 4s suffer of a problem which has been christened 'Blue Light of Death'. When a PS4 is turned on with a press of the power button, the light that runs along the side of the console should first pulse blue and then switch to white. At this point the console turns on the picture signal to the display device. Those who have a unit with the glitch are instead finding that their PS4 pulses blue, never goes to white and never outputs an image. We do not have accurate statistics of how widespread the issue is, but reports are popping up in Amazon reviews, Twitter, YouTube and other websites. PlayStation support is still in midst of investigating the issue, but has already posted a bunch of magic tricks you can try to get the console past the initial startup stage."

Re:Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, they should have written a nice letter to the head(s) of the company. That would have made a forceful statement and gotten widespread attention.

You know, the funny thing about rights is that they're an abstract, man-made concept that only exists in our mind. Some might say that workers have a right to manage and perform their work as they see fit. Or some might call this an act exercising freedom of speech or expression. Ah, rights.

Re:Stats

[AmiMoJo]

Quite. Note that most of the negative reviews on Amazon state that the package arrived DOA, often poorly packaged or damaged externally. Those things have mechanical hard drives in them, for example.

To be honest I'd be amazed if any new device shipping tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of units wasn't subject to some rate of failure. I hate Sony as much as the next guy but we basically know nothing at this point.

Re:Sabotaged

[glavenoid]

Don't all protests eventually boil down to protesting with other people's hard-earned money? Seems to me that's pretty much the reason for protests -- to disrupt someone's flow of money long or hard enough (inb4 that's what she said) to enact change against some transgression, perceived or otherwise. Whether the act of protesting damages physical property or intangible things like reputation, the end result is that a protest still costs the person or organization being protested money.

The ps4 is still under warranty so the consumer is protected for the cost of the console regardless if this is an act of protest via sabotage or something innocuous. Might cost sony quite a bit though.

Re:Sabotaged

[CastrTroy]

Filing a warranty claim isn't always free to the end user. When my eReader died, I had to pay shipping to get it to the repair depot. That was only about $10, but that is actually significant percentage of a $100 eReader. With something large and heavy like a Playstation, it could be significantly more to actually get your device fixed under the warranty. Also, there's all that time you can't be using the device. If it's just for fun, like a playstation, this may not be a big deal, but what if it's a laptop you bought for work. Going without a computer for 4-6 weeks certainly isn't something I'd want to deal with because some employee wanted to do some form of "protest". Hurting the end-users isn't really the answer.

Re:Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

Annoying you for 4-6 weeks is arguably exactly what they hope to do. It causes serious monetary and time annoyances, which makes you consider: Why did this happen? Who did this? Why did they do it? Why are their working conditions so poor? Why am I supporting a company where these types of working conditions are common?

Takes some balls for the workers to do this imo. Many will likely be fired.

Ahhh, Rev A hardware

[multimediavt]

For all the eager beavers that had to have the first PS4s I laugh at your gullibility. You are the public BETA testers. If you haven't noticed this trend in the last twenty years, here's some sage advice about new gadgets. Buy them a few months after launch once they get to Rev B or higher on their boards and more software comes out. First adopters are always the BETA testers for the hardware because of all the secrecy and money that goes into the development. Unless there's something especially good about the first units, i.e., some special edition or limited run made of gold, then the only thing you lose is juvenile bragging rights, and that doesn't last long if your Rev A model keeps BSODing. Hard to be cool with broken shit. But, have fun with your brand new, blue light pulsing space heater. I suspect that when I get my tax return in March I can walk into a store, pick a Rev B/C/D model off the shelf with three or four games and have more fun with one that doesn't hose up every boot.

Re:Glitch? GLITCH?

[ganjadude]

This is why i miss cartridge based gaming. I dont recall any of my nintendo products prior to the gamecube ever haveing any issue doing its intended goal (play a game)

Re:Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call it reprehensible. Being forced to work without compensation is the definition of slavery. Throwing a wrench in the master's machine is your moral duty if you can get away with it.

Re:HDCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony was the principal developer of the Blu-Ray format and has its own content division pushing for DRM measures. If you don't blame Sony for DRM fuckups in their products, you might as well bend over and take it.

Re:Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously dont care about their poor conditions so why should they care about you? Hitting your wallet - or rather inconveniencing you since you will either get a replacement or a refund anyway - is the only way they can raise your awareness about the problem.

Re:Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

We have no idea what the conditions actually were.

It doesn't matter. Unless you're being forced to work, and by 'forced' I mean literally imprisoned, then you don't have any moral grounds for damaging the employer's shit, no matter how pissed you are or how unfair YOU perceive their treatment to be.

The result was that prior to quitting the job, we simply stopped trying to make things better, and stopped "pestering" management about future problems, and we just played by their rules - which sometimes meant sending out servers with faulty fans that would fail after 3 weeks, sensors that didn't seem to work, and chips that melted - servers generally lasted no more than 7 weeks, when sent out in this condition. This was, in our way of thinking, a protest. And as you point out, "destruction of property", but what to do?

Translation- they didn't express the proper level of concern in YOUR book, so you quit doing your job well. That isn't a protest, that's just you being lazy and unprofessional.
A professional would have continued to file reports, continued to notify management of the problems, and done so until such a time as he quit the job. You weren't protesting, you simply got lazy, rolled over, and became the very thing you were "protesting" against.

Early adopter tax :)

[Torp]

And this is one of the reasons I'll get my PS4 next summer at the earliest.
The other being that there are fuck all games to play on it at the moment.

Re:Stats

[internerdj]

Still doesn't solve the issue of how representative the reviews are. The people who aren't seeing the issue probably have something other than writing reviews to fill their free time.