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Demo PS3 Units freeze on Purpose

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stay-off-my-kiosks-kid dept.

AbsoluteZero writes "A Sony rep has claimed to Destructoid that demo PS3 units in kiosks across the country were built to freeze up on purpose. From the article: "We do that so that people won't play it all day long," he explained. "Specifically during Motorstorm, we made it freeze up a lot.""

16 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. right... I'll buy that bridge... by jimstapleton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, no I infact won't. Changed my mind.

    That's what the short 5 minute demos are for. Actually making the console freeze up is just stupid, it screams unstable. This sounds more like backpedaling to cover up design flaws.

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    1. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No one in their right mind would design a kiosk that needs employee attention every 5-10 minutes. I mean, if the WalMart or BestBuy guy has to run over there to restart it constantly, then it's either a massive waste of his time or else there's the serious risk that the game will stay frozen for a long period of time. I did a little test last time I was in Best Buy. We saw that the PS3 was frozen when we walked in. 90 minutes later, we ambled out, and the PS3 was frozen at exactly the same screen.

      A kiosk is supposed to be hands-off for employees. Requiring a employee-managed kiosk is a bad idea.

    2. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by Mage+Powers · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One employee gives out bullshit reasoning and it gets treated everywhere as an official statement? Sony has screwed up enough already, theres no need to scrape the barrel guys.

    3. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd say his statement is complete BS.

      I used to work at EB. We had display kiosks of all the major consoles. The various vendors each had their own method to keep people from playing on the kiosks all day... I remember the XBox demo discs we ran in the kiosk all re-set back to the main menu every 10 minutes or so. The PlayStation 2 kiosk had some sort of timer that would interrupt the power and force the console to hard reset every 20 minutes or so. The GameCube demo discs generally just had very small snippets of gameplay...less than a single full level... The GameCube kiosk never forced a re-set of any kind, but there just wasn't that much to occupy your time on it.

      If Sony was, in fact, concerned about people playing on the kiosk all day long there are plenty of ways they could have re-set or rebooted the system that didn't require employee intervention. These machines aren't rebooting, they're locking up, and it requires an employee to physically re-set the system. That, to me, screams of poor design. Either it's a poorly designed re-set system that doesn't work as it should...or it's broken software that isn't actually supposed to be locking up. It isn't terribly encouraging either way.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    4. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by Scratch-O-Matic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My approach is similar to yours, except I smile politely and show him my receipt. He usually looks at the receipt, smiles back, and wishes me a happy day. Total time spent standing still: about 10 seconds. Maybe I'm just a sucker that way.

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      Evil is the money of root.
    5. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by hexix · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why are you telling me to read the article? What is it that you think I missed?

      The poster I was replying to said someone was going to get fired over this "decision", so I was pointing out that if they actually thought the console was freezing by design, he was being fooled. That is, after all, why this story made it to Slashdot. It is a ridiculous claim, and it was posted for us to laugh at how stupid this Sony rep is. The very idea that Sony would have designed the demo kiosks to freeze up in order to limit play-time is silly.

      Are we on the same page here?

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      FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
  2. Of course... by tehshen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" Where have I heard that before

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    Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
  3. FUD by joshetc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Couldn't they just uh, like make a popup that says it is the person-behind-you's tutrn to play?

  4. Ah, good explanation for the BSOD as well by CoolVibe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh! Eureka!

    As a comparison: Windows crashes on us all the time as to not let us be too productive! I get it now! What the hell do I need a *nix clone for!
    </sarcasm>

    Natch. Sounds more like a save-my-ass excuse. Way to go Sony!

  5. Re:credibility by Petersko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I don't doubt that they might be speaking the truth, but they could've just put in a five minute reset timer or something. having the unit freeze up is just tacky."

    You don't doubt that they might be speaking the truth? Are you serious?

    What in heavens name has Sony done to instill such deep trust in you?

    There's exactly NO chance that they made their demo product unstable and prone to crashing to keep people from playing it for too long.

  6. Re:This isn't some high up exec... by RESPAWN · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the real story anyway is that the demo consoles are freezing up on the customers in the stores. They shouldn't be doing that and it makes for a poor selling point if the customers always see a PS3 hard locked. (Also, what happened to putting a user-enabled reset switch on the front of the kiosks.) We all know the rep lied, but why was the console freezing up in the first place?

    So far, I have been to three different stores and seen the demo console frozen at each one of those stores with nobody bothering to reset them. (Meanwhile, I was able to try out the Wii at my local EB with them letting customers check out the Wiimote with their driver's license.)

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    If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

  7. Re:Maybe someone can tell me.... by HappySqurriel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Being that it was a "Sony Rep" rather than a well known Sony executive means that the story could very well be true ...

    A retail level representative is essentially just a sales person with little or no technical understanding of what they're selling. When a representative is asked a question they're always supposed to spout the company line when they can, and always make every answer positive for Sony. Being that Sony probably hasn't come up with a company line for why the PS3 keeps freezing a (dumb) representative spouted that "They were designed to do that."

    Developer/Publisher level representatives are (usually) far better informed and far more honest.

  8. Sony Lies by Bryansix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I used to be on the Sony Bandwagon. I loved my PS2. I liked what they where saying about the PS3 with free multiplayer etc. Then this whole rootkit crap happened. Sony refused to respond to consumers and only caved once the lawsuits flooded in. Then Sony pushed back the PS3 launch and pushed up the price. Then Sony pushed a company out of business just because they sold games and hardware out of region. What a racket that is anyways. Now Sony has reliability problems and they just lie some more to cover themselves. All of this pushed me to buy an XBox 360. I really didn't want to but I'm glad I did. So what if I have to pay to play online? At least my console works. At least it was hundreds of dollars less expensive. I'm tired of Sony's crap. Even if it means I have to buy MS crap; I'm never buying Sony crap again. Death to Sony!

    1. Re:Sony Lies by gamer4Life · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wow, if that's all it took for you to "never buy Sony", you'll probably throw your XBox 360 out the window when you actually do research into Microsoft's history.

  9. Re:Maybe someone can tell me.... by HappySqurriel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I understand what you're asking, all I am saying is that there is nothing about this story which could be verified (regardless of whether it is true) and there is very little about this story which would make me doubt that it is true; I have personally seen a frozen PS3 unit on display and I have seen in store Company Representative make remarkably stupid statements.

    Now, as for why this is on Slashdot ...

    The fact is that over the past 18 months Sony has alienated a large portion of their loyal userbase and their potential userbase; personally, Sony lost me before that but that is another story. A year and a half ago the PS3 was the system everyone wanted, the XBox 360 was an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, and the Revolution was exciting to Nintendo fans with massive disinterest for everyone else; today the PS3 is an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, the XBox 360 is exciting to XBox fans with massive disinterest for everyone else, and the Wii is the system everyone wants.

    Basically, Sony burned a lot of bridges and people want to hear negative stories about the PS3 because they hate Sony.

  10. Re:Maybe someone can tell me.... by Total_Wimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the problem is less whether the story is true or not than whether one conversation with a low-level Sony employee counts as any kind of news whatsoever.

    It would be like me talking to a clerk at the Best Buy who says he's pretty sure Sony is going to ship a million PS3s on New Years day. Then I go ahead and write a story saying that "Best Buy says" a million units will show up and people should start camping out in line.

    Why would this guy know? Why should I trust him? Why don't I confirm with a more authoritative source? Why on earth would I report it as the position of the company rather than random gossip from "some dude".

    HELLO, he's just a sales rep! He's not a spokesman, an engineer, and he doesn't work in shipping. At best, he heard something from someone else and at worst he's making it up. If you believe the latter is not the case, then you should at least have the sense to check with the guy he heard if from before reporting it as the actual policy of the company.

    TW

    Oh, BTW, some guy who was giving away free Linux disks told me that Linux doesn't have good open source ATI drivers on purpose, because they want people writing code instead of playing video games. Do you think I should submit that to /. so they can put a story on the front page about this important news? I know it's the real policy of the Linux kernel project because the guy is an active participant in the Linux community.