Ben-DutkaNormally, we don't bother with any "news" concerning hackers, but this bit seems to be sweeping across the Internet like wildfire.
According to MaxConsole , a hacker claims to have located a certain string in a PS3 .RCO file that apparently states, "msg_error_console_hot_pls_restart." This translates to, "the system has become hot. Please turn off the system and wait a while before turning it on again." Hence, the hacker has interpreted this as follows: Sony could prevent the deadly "Yellow Light of Death" issue by simply implementing a feature that would shut the system down when it was on the verge of overheating. …and the reason they didn't is because they wanted more sales. I.e., a YLoD outside any warranty will force the gamer to simply buy another console, thereby artificially inflating sales numbers.
Now, I know absolutely nothing about coding. But I do know a little something about numbers. I know that according to retail estimates, the YLoD has never once been all that catastrophic, especially in regards to the new Slim model. It seems highly unlikely that Sony would earn extra significant revenue by "cashing in" utilizing the above hypothesis. But why is this news when the competition's "Red Ring of Death" on the Xbox 360 has indeed proven catastrophic…? So much so that Microsoft actually had to implement a free defective replacement policy? So bad that retailers at one time estimated a disastrous 30% sold : returned defective ratio? Microsoft went on record many times over the years saying they don't know what causes it, and at one time said, "it could happen to any system." Then, they go and release the new Slim saying they've fixed the problem. …forgive me, but how can you fix a problem when you don't know what it is?
It has long since been theorized that Microsoft could very easily have fixed the issue early on, when it seemed like half the 360s sold at launch were dead within the first year. With any other product, that's simply a colossal failure and one that would require action. But years went by, and God only knows how many gamers had to buy new 360s…does anyone know someone who has been forced to buy any less than three? The RRoD has been covered by everyone from the smallest blogs to the New York Times and statistically speaking, is many times more destructive than the YLoD, which hasn't been anywhere near as widespread. Why exactly are we following a would-be logical train of thought on Sony's side when blatant evidence for the same hypothesis exists amongst the competition…?
By the way, for the record, Nintendo makes the most reliable consoles. They always have. Pretty sure you could let a train run over the Wii and and it'd still somehow work. But it's also a well-known fact that Microsoft has always been on the opposite end of the reliability spectrum, and if any company is guilty of artificially inflating sales numbers by conveniently ignoring a major problem…well, I'm not sure Sony should be taking the headline.
Effing nonsense. More spin from MS fanboys no doubt. The BBC ran some bogus story about the YOLD as well claiming its a plague across the PS3 community. I think they got their companies mixed up too.
From what i can tell, its only the 60gb models that seem to be affected the most. Not saying other models haven't gotten the YOLD, but 99% of the time when people complain of the problem, its a launch PS3 that was affected. Given it has quite a bit more hardware in it it will naturally run hotter and over time wear out faster.
I can't believe this garbage is still going on.
The internet, a bless and a curse. Full of information but also full of morons like these hackers who misread a line of code and try to turn it into "Soooony is teh Devel drrrrrrrrrrrrr!!" moment.
I haven't had any issue with my Slim model. Never gets too hot or too loud. My refurb 60gb seems to be running strong as well though i do use it less. As for my Wii, my dog was playing one day and snagged the GameCube controller wire while i was playing Resident Evil Remake pulling the Wii off a shelf where it fell 4 to 5 feet off the shelf to the ground. Crashing hard, breaking the controller and memory card lid. The game didn't even freeze. Been almost 2 years since that happened. Wii still runs great. I have never had a piece of Nintendo hardware die on me. Never a Sony piece of hardware either besides my 60gb PS3. Still have my PS2 from launch and gave my launch PS1 to my dad. It still works too.
Besides, doesn't the YOLD indicate a general hardware failure, not just over heating?
Last edited by Jawknee on 9/26/2010 10:13:34 PM
Yes, the yellow LED indicates any hardware failure. It could be a bad HDD or overheating, or a problem with the BluRay drive, or anything else wrong with the system. It's an indicator of a general failure.
The thing is how many people who have a PS3 that overheats and shuts down, realize that's why and do something about it? How many more simply restart it again and again until it finally fails because whatever is preventing the cooling system from adequately cooling the system stopped it cooling at all?
That's a huge problem right there. People do not want to take corrective action if there is a non-fatal fault. Instead they keep on using the system until it dies.
When my 60gb YOLD it hadn't been on longer than 10 minutes. Thats why i figured when mine YLOD'd it had to be something else. Couldn't have gotten hot enough to over heat in 10 minutes. Especially since it hadn't been turned on in 2 or 3 days prior.
Type YOLD several times. >.< YLOD*
I lost my 60 gb cause i didn't vacuum the vents….till this day i kick myself…it was my fault i didn't take care of it….it will not happen ever again though…not again!
the ps3 does have a setting where the red light keeps flashing when it overheats. i think it turns off the ps3 then. its in the ps3 manual so this code is most likely for overheating.
what i found funny though is that when i left a comment on a kotaku article, this guy just kept replying to me that the 360 is the best console and all those other crap. i asked him how much times his 360 rrod, he said he was on his 13th 360. luckily for him microsoft fixed the rrod situation with the new slim…..
Last edited by johnld on 9/27/2010 1:30:10 AM
I've had my 60g since launch and its been run almost everyday for hours on end, i even used to do the folding thing. i haven't had a single problem with it.
lucky fu**er
The thing with your Wii reminded me of when I worked for gamestop and the manager and I were getting rid of the PS1 stock because we weren't allowed to sell them anymore.
They were all on the top shelf in the stock room and one of them came out of a poorly put together box landed on the ground and busted the disc tray door off and looked like it severely harmed the system. We, for fun, threw a game in it and hooked it up to a TV and the damn thing still played! Lol, it was hilarious because the only thing we had to do was tape a piece of plastic in the switch that indicated that the door was shut.
That PS1 became a kind of store mascot.
I've had my original "20GB" PS3 model since launch, and it still works perfectly, as it always has!
I have only upgraded the HD to a 160gb drive a few years back, but only because I wanted to get more space, not because there was something wrong with the original HD.
Take care of your electronic equipment and you'll be MUCH less likely to ever have any problems with them, and that includes the PS3 as well as anything else!
Keep it clean, especially around the fan intake & exhaust. Don't use it in a hot/humid or smoke/dust-filled environment.
I've had my 60GB for about 4-5 years, just died. The biggest problem with the theory of Sony "cashing in" on people buying new consoles to replace their dead consoles is that there is the option to trade it in for a new console. I just sent it off to Sony this week and am waiting for my new slim model.
Yep, my 60 GB PS3 just died. Had Yakuza 3 still in it too. So I gotta send it in and they're gonna upgrade me to a 120GB slim model for about $150. Trophies are okay but lost all my save files.
This is laughable at best… Just another example of internet ignorance at its finest.
It all doesn't matter considering how low the defective percentage is for the ps3 compared to 360.
Whether or not they are at fault, Microsoft is the one we should be flaming. At the very least ps3s last 2 or 3+ years without any problems compared to the usual 3 or 5 months with the 360.
So…..who's got the biggest nose here?
By the way Slim is the quietest, nicest console I've ever had. It even beats out the ps2. Though the ps1 is one fine console as well as far as reliability.
Last edited by Scarecrow on 9/26/2010 10:16:26 PM
And I wonder why no one ever take a dig at the 360, PS3's good name has always been damaged by the fools who have too much time.
I can go on forever with all the articles bad-mouthing the PS brand and it's games.
And is this news?
How many years did it took Microsoft to "fix" the RROD? And since the failure rate was so damn high, they should have solved it quicker.
And after RRoD was "fixed", along comes E74.
And I heard that RRoD was never fixed, it was simply removed as I read from somewhere saying that it will shut down automatically if it's too hot. Right…….and my PS3 is still fine after 48 hours straight.
PS3s have always had the capability to not only warn the user of an overheating situation, but they can, and always have been able to, shut themselves down and off to prevent thermal damage to the system. IIRC there was once a comparison of 360 and PS3 specifically regarding overheating. The PS3 lasted longer than the 360, the 360 RROD'd and the PS3 restarted once it had cooled off.
I think that a lot of this kind of story relies on people not knowing enough about the hardware/software in the consoles. PS3 has thermal protection built into the hardware and software and shuts down to prevent hardware damage. This can look abrupt to users, they might think it's a failure, when in fact it's the opposite. If a PS3 has a fan that is performing badly, or the heatsink is no longer effectively removing all the heat, the PS3 will shutdown frequently, and again the user will see this as a failure. Sure, the fan or heatsink might need a repair, but the system is preventing catastrophic damage by shutting itself off.
When I was going around the PS Store and maybe something wrong with my connection and it simply shut down.
But I never had it shut down on me for playing for playing more than 24 hours.
You went 48 hours straight?!
I used to do the Folding at Home thing, and my original 60GB launch system used to do 96 hours at a stretch. I don't care what some random hackers paranoia drives him to accuse Sony of, the PS3 is a rock solid performer.
I got my slim in May. I never turned off the system once after the first week. And it is still doing Folding at home 7×24. It is warm but never hot at all.
Yeah, they removed the red led's on the front of the console. so it technically cant RRoD anymore.
I dont remember reading anywhere that they actually fixed the hardware problem though.
Nonsense.
I don't get this at all. Sony includes code in the firmware to detect when the system is overheating and an error handler to tell the user to shut down and let it cool off, and because they take this precaution, some hacker decides to take this and somehow turn an overheating warning into an accusation that Sony wants consoles to fail? If they want consoles to fail, why would they bother writing a handler for overheating events?
Honestly, what a bunch of BS.
Well yeah, isn't this a common thing to do?
Saying BS is even kind.
hahah, if anything, microsoft has one of those codes on the 360. i'm not sure but werent there about 1 million 360s that bricked right before ODST came out? or was it just gamer accounts that were banned. i do know that microsoft does ban consoles.
hahah, if anything, microsoft has one of those codes on the 360. i'm not sure but werent there about 1 million 360s that bricked right before ODST came out? or was it just gamer accounts that were banned. i do know that microsoft does ban consoles.
john you ass…lol
Those consoles were banned. Funny how M$ waited until the release of ODST / the holiday season instead of banning each console as soon as they knew it was modded.
I predict another million or so banned 360s right around the release of Kinect.
"No, really…it's a system seller."
Last edited by Fane1024 on 9/27/2010 3:55:43 PM
well i have owned the ps3 a shorter time than the 360, so i'm not so sure this counts, but we're on our 4th xbox and 2nd ps3 so… yea. take that as you will but i prefer the ps3
also my 1st ps3 broke after 2 years, 1st xbox 3 maybe 4 months
Last edited by jigokunohoono on 9/26/2010 10:23:37 PM
BS… I got my ps3 back when they were $600 and it's been through rigorous usage. It's still rolling strong. I still need to upgrade the HDD, I only have 40 gigs :/
Take good care of it dude, who knows, you might have the oldest launch PS3.
Mines the launch model, got it at midnight.
Still going strong. Had some odd moments at times like crashing and then when i restart, it rebuilds my hardrive :S. It's also suddenly went to a blue screen displaying allsorts of info once….had to restart.
I only have 6gig left! I'm constantly battling for space.
@Lotusflow3r
It sounds like your hard disk has some data corruption on it at a low level. This can happen, and the problem is that the file system repair in the system utility menu can't fully fix the problem. the only thing that can is a real low level format that updates the drives bad sector table and removes the sector(s) that are corrupt from use. I have a 320GB drive that has some bad corruption on it, and have similar problems. The file system restore is simply a band aid, and the problem returns after a while because that utility can't fix the low level corruption, or remove the sector(s) from use.
Your best bet is to carefully copy your game saves to a USB stick, if you have a large enough external USB drive try a backup, it may fail if the utility tries to backup a file that is corrupt on the HDD. But it's worth a try. Once you have got everything you an off the system, deactivate it for games and video so that all your system activations for games and other content are preserved.
Then do either of these two things. Reformat the drive using the system recovery menu. Let it do the longer reformat, it's inconvenient, but works better for a bad HDD.
Or buy a new HDD and install it.
If you were able to get a good backup, now is the time to restore it. If not, recreate all your users using the PSN IDs, email accounts and passwords you used before, put your game saves back on the system, make sure it's activated for games and video, and then re-download any and everything that is in your transaction history download list.
Trust me, it's not a fun process, but it does work. You can find a better and more complete description and guide to all of this on Sony's PS3 support site.
Thanks Highlander AKA Tech-Man…..whom we should all tech-notice of………..*wind howls*.
Ahem, i've been contemplating changing hardrives for awhile, but as you said, it may not back it up and i have a lot of music and music bootlegs on here (my PC died) and i can't risk losing them. It's a right pickle.
I'm gonna get tech-savvy with it soon and check if it's possible. I wouldn't know what external hardrive to get or anything!
Last edited by Lotusflow3r on 9/27/2010 4:44:53 PM
Another thing these morons are missing, it costs far less to simply have Sony fix your console or replace it with a refurb than to buy a while new console. How did that little fact get by them?
Oh…probably because facts don't matter when your only goal is to smear.
While I was a victim of YloD, I think the accusation is both incredibly presumptuous and it makes zero sense.
THe PS3 for the first few years COSTED Sony money with every sale–even at $400-$600. It's idiotic to assume that Sony would want to sell two bottom-line draining systems to every one user. They'd much rather have $400-$600 of sales in software and services where the profitability would be.
And as far as I'm concerned, the defect ratio of the original x360 is 100%. The design is flawed (in most situations this would necessitate a recall) it's not a matter of "if" your 360 will fail in the next 5 years (that's generous) or so, but "when."
ANd most my buds opted for the lesser cost repair service (and warrantied) X360 replacement.. which for a few, was 3x or more… ouch.
Logic and reason matter little to those with an agenda to smear an opponent or a company they dislike. All the facts laid out by you, me Highlander and everyone else on this page eluded these tools.
They came to smear. Nothing more.
I love this article. All your comments seem to tell the truth. The PSX community is the truth! I like PSX 🙂
So to me it seems that this guy is with MS all the way.
Wow so after everything that's happened with Microsoft Sony still get the finger pointed at them. It's something like this that really makes me lose hope in people.
Electronics have a life cycle. That's a fact. You don't code in failure, you build failure. A system will live or die depending both on the design of the product and the components used.
Even though electronics can be brought to an early end by incompetent end users, if, by what is considered "normal use," your system goes up in flames, that's the manufacturer's fault.
Not coding in a shut down failsafe for the morons who have their PS3s sitting on a radiator is NOT the manufacturer's fault.
I wonder how much longer my PS2 will last. Granted i used it much less but it still gets some use. Have had the console since launch.
Yes….but. Hardware does not have an unlimited life. Despite the best efforts older electronics do fail.
One thing that can, and I expect does, happen in the PS3 is that over time and with extensive use, the thermal compound used dries out, becomes brittle and fails to perform properly. What's the actual life of the compound? Not sure, but I'd bet that one of the best things you can do for a PS3 you are re-conditioning is removing the heat sink/fan and applying new thermal compound.
It could be. nothing is certain.
Sony's never had to depend on a game of theft and deceit in the past. I don't see them starting a MS practice and face a lawsuit by Bill Gates for stealing his idea.
Now that i think about it, everything that i or my family has ever owned that's made by Sony has lasted at least a decade. My Vaio from college still runs great, the TV my dad bought, the one like Al Bundy's is still working as well. Out of all the money spent on Sony stuff by me and my immediate family has lasted.
Besides my 60gb of course which seems like a fluke at this point.
Last edited by Jawknee on 9/26/2010 11:01:54 PM
I've had the same results from Sony products. I don't see them sabotaging their own products for more sales.
I'm sensing a case of "projection" on behalf of these MS gargoyles.
I had a Sony VCR that only lasted 2-3 years before having problems, but I used to record and watch all my TV shows on VCR before I got a PVR, so it probably gave me 5-10 years of normal usage.
Aside from my PS3 (2 YLOD repairs, but still working), that's the only Sony product I've owned that didn't last a long, long time without any problems.
What nonsense. I did get the YLoD but it was on the fatty which I had forever, ran for hours on end and didn't mind placing it almost directly against a wall. So, if anything I'm probably to blame. As far as Sony purposely including this malfunction to boost sales.. I highly doubt it. Since when are we trusting hackers for our news? Anyways, I agree with Ben the RRoD had claimed far more systems of faithful gamers and after years of broken systems and having no idea what caused the problem a miraculous new system arises that won't randomly up and die..
One mpre thing I wanted to throw out. When I first got my 360 back when it first came out, I barely played it. I used to get atleast 3 hours a week on it. Maximum 3 hours. So you guys should know im not at risk of overheating right. Yet I still got the RRoD Iys like Mocrosoft made the RRoD a problem no matter what to boost sales. It is the reason why it has more units sold that Ps3 and also impacted our economy today 😀
A hacker is trying to warn us that a corporation could be taking advantage of the consumer by making them buy another product?
You know, the Play Station 3 software updates and that code may not have been enacted at launch. Microsoft situation is a lot worse.