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Sony Sued Over Bricked PS3s
Zarrot writes "If Sony's recent 3.00 PS3 firmware update bricked your console, you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony. The complaint alleges that thousands of users (PDF) were affected by the update, and in some cases the PS3 hardware itself was damaged. It continues, 'For owners who sustained hardware damage from the Sony-required update, Sony is charging a $150 repair fee per unit. Sony, responding to the numerous complaints about the unacceptable effects of the defective update, released a further, optional update that it claimed "improves system stability" — yet performance problems continued, and the new update did nothing to remedy the systems of users who sustained hardware damage."'"
So now Nintendo and Sony have both managed to brick consoles with firmware updates. Great.
Sorry, fellas. YOU broke it, YOU don't get to bill US to fix your mistakes.
I went with microsoft instead of sony...
Sony claiming the hardware is licensed, not sold in 3... 2... 1...
That can happen to anybody - all vendors have some lemons. The question is, how many and how do they handle it when they sold you something with a problem? A good vendor will take care of it to the best of their ability and leave you with as little problems as possible - a bad vendor will ignore you.
I got an outdated DPT RAID controller from a friend a decade ago. It had problems cooperating with my BIOS - it would only boot correctly (exactly) every second time, or something like that. Not something that was a big deal to me, and the card was about five years old at that time (and I was not the original owner). However, I sent them an email to just ask if they had a solution. They immediately (as in same day, and without me asking for it) sent me new firmware chips by Fedex. Shipping came to $70 - more than the card was worth on the second hand market.
I've had other vendors that have driven out in the middle of the night with replacement servers when I suspected that there was a problem with one of the servers they'd delivered.
It's not the failure - it's the failure to handle the failure.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Never ascribe to incompetence that which can be explained by greedy self-interest. Is it possible that this was deliberate? After all, they deliberately rooted thousands of PCs (inclusing mine) a few years ago, so you KNOW they're evil even by corporate standards, and they're charging $150 to fix a problem that their "update" caused.
They won't brick MY PS3, because there's no way in hell I'll buy another product from the company that rooted my computer with a trojan in a music CD. Why do people keep buying stuff from this company? I won't -- once bitten, twice shy. Buy from Sony and you're asking to get screwed, with sand as lube.
Despite my being a Nintendo fanboy and somebody who despises Sony, I can't follow you with the pitchfork on this one. This sort of scam requires exreme levels of short-sighted-stupidity and greed, that Microsoft hasn't even reached. There's no way any guy wearing a tie there is going to see that as profitable even after the legal settlements.
Brick happens.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Great -- so affected users have a shot at getting a check for like, eight dollars in acouple of years while some lawyer gets rich. Gotta love that...
Caveat Utilitor
When it doesn't do what it's supposed to do (or stops doing what it's supposed to do), yeah, that's bricked.
No. It's bricked when there is no hope at all at making it playable again. If it can execute code, it's not bricked.
Honestly dude, It's bad enough the sensationalist media cannot use the term correctly.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Years ago, I bought their first "slim" digital camera. The DSC-T1. Shortly after buying it, I managed to break the totally unprotected LCD. I took full responsibility and called them up. "How much will it cost to have the screen replaced?" "If it was out of warranty, the cost would be $130 but defective screen is covered by your warranty." "No, it's not defective. I broke it. There's no way I could possibly pass this off as a manufacturing defect even if I was sleazy enough to try." "Oh, then it's $180." "What? Why does this cost more than a regular out of warranty repair?" "It just does."
And I was fucked. It was a brand new model so the chances of a "parts" listing showing up on ebay any time soon was pretty much zero. I was already into the camera for $500. The best grey-market refurb price I could find anywhere was $400. So I paid the out of warranty repair cost PLUS the $50 "because we're dicks" fee. It was either have a $680 camera or burn the $500 I'd already spent. When the repaired camera arrived, I affixed a thin sheet of plastic over the LCD. I swore I'd never purchase another Sony product as long as I lived. That lasted about 3 years when I bought one of their photo printers (which I still use occasionally). And I've bought another camera (mixed feelings about its quality), a book reader (rocks), a cell phone (rocked), etc.
Sony's like an ex who steals money from your wallet, badmouths you to her friends, and orders steak-n-lobster when meet up for lunch but the couple times a year you hook up seem so worth it. Until you check your wallet the next day and you swear you won't answer the phone next time she calls. And it works for a few months. But then you run into her at the mall and going to dinner is safe enough. God, she looks good...
As a software engineer, I feel some sympathy for those who release patches for desktop computer OSes. A computer is a general-purpose device that is intended to allow users to install third-party applications that have full access to a huge API; to install applications like antivirus utilities that dig deep into the OS; and add hardware and the low-level drivers that go with them. The OS update is applied to an environment that may have wandered far from its starting point. Every customer has a unique configuration that probably has meaningful differences from any box in the SQA department.
But a game console? A game console is a walled garden, the applications need only a circumscribed set of functions, the vendor has total control over what goes on it, and nobody is adding third-party hardware to it.
Sony should be ashamed of itself, and should have volunteered to fix damaged systems for free--long before anyone complained.
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