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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.""

30 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 Vo0k · · Score: 5, Funny

      Requiring a employee-managed kiosk is a bad idea.

      Oh, you're quite wrong here. Employee-managed (and operated, with the employee being the subject of display) kiosks are quite important and successful branch of the sexual entertainment industry.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    4. 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
    5. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by afidel · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hehe, I love those guys. If they try to detain me I tell them they better have proof of theft or they are going to jail for false imprisonment. If they grab me I tell them they have one second to release me before I respond with force and have them arrested for assault. They have no legal right to stop you, and if they do without proof of theft they are almost always breaking the law. Just be sure to be calm and collected because otherwise you might get in trouble for disturbing the peace. I haven't stopped for those idiots in years, makes leaving the store much faster during the holidays =)

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    6. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by aplusjimages · · Score: 5, Funny

      For me it never froze

      Then you got a defective system. You may want to send it back so they can add the freeze software in.
      --
      Can I bum a sig?
    7. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by SoCalChris · · Score: 5, Funny

      I always tell them "No thanks, I'm not interested", and keep walking. It drives my wife nuts.

    8. Re:right... I'll buy that bridge... by 7Prime · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually FFXIIs load times are probably the best on the system. They seem to have taken a hint from many other games, including Metroid Prime, and do a preload of adjacent rooms while the processor is free, and also keeps the previous room in the buffer (monsters appear at the door if you go back and forth). You want ass load times? Try Suikoden V, great game, but each new area can be as short as one hallway wide, and the load time is always between 8-15secs. Probably just as bad is Dragon Quest 8, another great game, but it has a 5-10sec load every time you bring up the menu screen, and then another 5-10secs when you go into various alternate sections of the menu system, and then another 5-10secs to get back to the game.

      It's really not so much the system's capability that defines load times, but how good the game is designed to accomidate for them. There's no question that the GameCube is far faster at retrieving data off the disc, but a lot of the faster speeds you're seeing are due to suggestions/requirements by Nintendo as to how to compansate for loading. Metroid Prime is a great example: large complex rooms are separated by small, simple corridors in which the processor has extra time to load the next room into memory. This way, the game never stops, the player is always doing SOMETHING, and furthermore, it helps to broaden out the level areas, and give some variety in room size and makeup. Many times these corridors are also sparcely populated, or include hidden power pickups as well. Also, since adjacent rooms load in the background, the game is always ready for where the player is going to be. The result is a game that never stops, and the maximum wait time for openning a door is something like 2-3secs tops if you've rushed through a large room before the processor had a chance to finish preloading the adjacent room.

      FF12 did some of this by preloading adjacent rooms... it's one of the first games I've seen on the PS2 that does this, and it resulted in one of the fastest loading games on the system. Most RPGs on the PS2 are absolutely aweful in loadtimes: Xenosaga, Suikoden V, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, Wild Arms 4, all obnoxious load times (and some obnoxious games, but I won't go there).

      BTW: fuck HDs, why not simply have a gig onboard cache that would be used to store all possible data that will be needed in the next 20 seconds (like adjacent rooms or areas). That can practically be done now, but many programmers are too lazy to do anything with it... there is just no excuse for not doing things like this in Suikoden V and Dragon Quest.

      This is probably the number 1 reason I like about Nintendo, beyond their high quality hardware and software, they have high standards about how clean games must be before they run on their systems. They realize that every game that goes out on their systems reflects on their image, and they take it upon themselves to make sure developers don't screw it up. Sony seem to project an image of non-involvement when it comes to their systems... as long as the developers pay their licensing fees and don't inherently crash the system every 5 minutes, they can do whatever they want. It's like the difference between Apple and Microsoft in terms of interface design, but that's a different post altogether.

      --
      Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
  2. Of course... by tehshen · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    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. Sony for MVP by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sony's batting 1000 this year. Going for MVP it looks like.

  5. Sure, whatever by JayTech · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sure, just like Microsoft made Windows crash so we would be able to take a break from using the PC...

  6. Fixed link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not that anybody will use it...

    http://www.destructoid.com/playstation-3-kiosks-fr eezing-up-on-purpose--28860.phtml

  7. This isn't some high up exec... by tarun713 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a rep that visits game stores. Bottom of the food chain. One rep saying something stupid in the heat of christmas shopping with a shopper pestering him for conversation while he's trying to set up a demo kiosk isn't really that big a deal.

    1. 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.)

      --

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

  8. thats not what best buy told me... by freg · · Score: 4, Informative

    I asked a Best Buy sales rep how he like the PS3. He said "well I wouldn't buy one just yet, the demo unit freezes up all the time..." Needless to say he didn't sell me a unit that day. Maybe Sony should send a memo to their retailers explaining this "feature" if they want to sell it

  9. 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.

  10. OTOH by WormholeFiend · · Score: 4, Interesting

    it could be that the booth is a PS3 in a nearly airtight clear plastic box...

    I assumed it was a case of overheat

    Also this weekend, I brought my Wii to my brother's place to show it off, only to discover he'd just scored a PS3

    After a couple of hours of side by side comparison, his wife asked him why he didn't get a Wii instead.

    Ouch.

    (I also regret not having videotaped our gaming session, as my bro's wife lost her balance and dove headfirst during a bowling throw, almost going through the widescreen tv)

    1. Re:OTOH by The_Abortionist · · Score: 4, Funny

      > (I also regret not having videotaped our gaming session, as my bro's wife lost her balance and dove headfirst during a bowling throw, almost going through the widescreen tv)

      Had she gone through the TV screen, she could sue Nintendo for not including bungie cords with the game!

      --
      Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
    2. Re:OTOH by Sarcastic+Assassin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Interesting story about that.

      On the night of the Wii launch, I walked into my local gaming store about 10 minutes before midnight to pick up my pre-ordered console. As I stood in line, the manager (who was busy preparing people's Wii bundles so they would be ready when the clock struck midnight) asked one of the employees to reset the PS3, which was in the middle of a demo movie, annoyingly blaring music. The employee walked over to the kiosk, and opened a latch, and the front of the kiosk swung open to reveal a second PS3 sitting in a metal housing below the plastic display case. He pressed a button on the PS3 in the metal housing, and the screen returned to the PS3 menu. The manager explained that the PS3 you see in the plastic case is just an empty shell, in case someone tries to steal it. The real PS3 is in that metal housing.

      I don't remember if the metal housing had vents, but I doubt the PS3 is overheating. So far, there have been no reports of PS3's overheating (which may be due to the massive shortage), and it wouldn't surprise me that Sony expects employees to babysit their precious PS3 kiosks.

  11. Zap! by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Informative

    As anyone who went to Toys R Us back in the "World of Nintendo" NES/SNES days knows, that's why they make displays that simply reset themselves every so often, via a timer switch on the power outlet. My friends and I used to hang out in the store, annoy the staff, play the demo consoles, and base Tetris/Sonic/Mario/whatever battles on how far one could get before the automatic reset. Why would they suddenly build specially-crippled consoles now? It doesn't really make much sense fom any standpoint I can see.

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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  12. Maybe someone can tell me.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I asked this question on Digg and I am the one with the -22 Diggs. That's Digg for you. Well, here's my question:

    Who is the guy that wrote this piece? Is it even true? The story just sounds made up.

    Or is it just that people want to justify their hate for the PS3 so much that facts and logic goes out the window?

    Seriously, who is Mr. Nick Brutal?

    1. 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.

    2. Re:Maybe someone can tell me.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually that was not my question at all. I am asking whether anyone can verify the "truthiness" of the story. I mean I could write a blurb about how a Wii rep killed my dog and ate its entrails in a "The Aristocrats" inspired fit, but that would not be true.

      These days work is a bit slow and I spend a lot of time on /., Digg, Lxer etc. What I have seen consistently is a ton of these blurbs coming up and saying something without any references. This is ok for Digg, but for such a story to be on the frontpage of /. is something I find hard to swallow.

      Say what you will about the PS3, I had high hopes for it to at least open people up to Linux in a small way, if not by way of an alternate OS, then by way of running MythTV etc.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. Re:Maybe someone can tell me.... by geobeck · · Score: 5, Funny

      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."

      I could imagine sales drones for other companies making the same excuse:

      Wiimote: "It's a boomerang; throw it a little harder and it will return."

      X-Box 360 power supply: "That's the integrated space heater."

      Laptop batteries: "That's part of the force feedback system."

      Pentium floating-point error: "That's to make sure you check your calculations by hand, like you're supposed to."

      The Titanic: "In the event of a collision, the water cooling system kicks in."

      --
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  13. this is old news by xdxfp · · Score: 5, Funny

    This idea isn't new. Trojan designed a condom in the 90's that broke on purpose so people wouldn't have sex all day.

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  14. Shopkeeper's Privlege by GodInHell · · Score: 4, Informative
    Wikipedia article


    As a law student, I'll certify to the limits of my knowledge of the issues that wikipedia is a good source for getting "a sense" of the law. Here's a good example. The shopkeeper's privlege is NOT statutory, it is part of the common-law tradition which is used in almost the entire United States (I believe Louisiana is on purely statutory system, but I'm not stopping to check, so don't quote me on that).

    From the Article:

    A store owner holds the common law shopkeeper's privilege, under which he is allowed to detain a suspected shoplifter on store property for a reasonable period of time, with cause to believe that the person detained in fact committed, or attempted to commit theft of store property. The shopkeeper's privilege, although recognized in most jurisdictions, is not as broad a privilege as that of a police officer's, and therefore one must pay special attention to the temporal element -- that is, the shopkeep may only detain the suspected criminal for a relatively short period of time. So, to sumarize - most store owners and employees granted the task (ie managers and security guards) can require that you stop and allow them to examine your person for goods when there is a reason to do so. This has been upheld even in cases involving "general" suspicion, where a guard checks every person or random persons on their way out.

    Since the guard would have the legal right to retain your presence under reasonable circumstances (can't gang tackle you on your way out) if you respond by threatening violence, you are subject to a suit for: (dun dun duh dun!) Common Assault.

    A quick guide to tortious assualt can be found - Here


    As a note to the officer above, these are both tortious acts, not criminal - hence no requirement for a statute. They can be governed by common law which is more permissive and allows (broad brush stroke here) only cash damages.

    -GiH

    The previous statements are nuance deprived - see your lawyer for details.