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."

Comments

attention kmart shoppers there is a bule light spe

[Joe_Dragon]

on all Sony stuff.

Rambo

[tuo42]

What's that?
It's blue light.
What does it do?
It pulses blue.

Sabotaged

[mrspoonsi]

See this article: http://www.neowin.net/news/foxconn-intern-claims-ps4-was-sabotaged-during-manufacturing
Seems the workers were not happy.

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:Sabotaged

[girlintraining]

First, this hasn't been verified. You're citing a single (deleted) post on an internet forum. It would be like me claiming Microsoft CEO Ballmer visits my cube during late nights coding and molests me. Credibility = Zero.

Second, quality control is handled externally to FoxConn -- or at least it damn well should have been. I don't think this is a worker revolt. We would have seen more than one post. If you ask me, it's one of two things -- the most likely is a bad batch of capacitors or other commodity parts. It's happened before -- just ask Monkey Man (who isn't molesting me, btw) about the XBox 360's RROD (Red Ring Of Death) -- which was traced to substandard parts and compounded by poor design regarding air circulation within the unit. The other possibility, an outlier, but considering this is Sony... is that their DRM has malfunctioned in a spectacular fashion. There are literally dozens of layers of DRM in this device, and it could be that a conflict has emerged at the hardware level due to authentication, etc. But like I said, it's an outlier; My money is on shit components.

Re:Sabotaged

[BringsApples]

We have no idea what the conditions actually were.

I used to work at a place that created software for a certain part of the car manufacturing business. The product of the company was the software, however they acted as a middle-man for the hardware, simply making profit for being the middle-man. The owners of the company had no idea about hardware, and didn't care to learn. They just wanted to "git-r-dun", if you know what I mean. So they hired a few folks to run that dept, but never really had any respect for these people, I was one of them. Management's point of view was that hardware was stuff that came in boxes, and if things broke, then you just get another one and replace, they didn't know or care about configuring devices, or what it meant, but their system depended upon it being done correctly always. Despite countless occasions where failure was warned about, where problems were pointed out prior to actually manifesting, and despite indisputable facts being pointed out, management didn't want to listen, and never gained respect for "the hardware guys". They would require us to do things that would depend on us breaking other rules that were established.

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?

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.

Stats

[Spad]

"We do not have accurate statistics of how widespread the issue is, but according to Amazon reviews and Youtube comments, over 500% of PS4 units sold so far are suffering from this issue"

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:Stats

[bloodhawk]

The reviewers are almost all VERIFIED purchasers. I.e. they are writing reviews for ps4's they have purchased. If they are shills then they are sure as hell going beyond the call of duty by going and buying a ps4 just to write a bad review.

Power On!

[the_skywise]

Awww screw it... let's just mix and match memes...

Han Solo: "Oh yeah? Watch this!"

Pulse blue: Atomic Batteries to power
Switch to white: Turbines to spee... BLAM

Leia: "Watch what?"

minimum wage = minimum effort

[Joe_Dragon]

even more so if you have a boss like bill lumbergh so you work just hard enough not to get fired

I much prefer the name...

[Anonymous Cowled]

... Pulsing Blue Dickpunch of Sadness

Re:I much prefer the name...

[captjc]

The best part is that after publishing the comic, Tim received his PS4 and it too had the Pulsing Blue Dickpunch of Sadness.

HDCP?

[DigiShaman]

Could be an issue with HDCP over HDMI. I would not surprise me if this is DRM failing thus holding up the boot process.

Re: attention kmart shoppers there is a bule light

[Anonymous Coward]

hdmi is a horribly laid out spec that a ton of manufacturers do not conform to correctly or at least are very loose about it. Depending on their bootup sequence and when their drivers are coming up for hdmi and the timing that the tv is using could cause issues, however in the end it would be a driver issue on the ps4 side since its up to them to not crap their pants at the sign of trouble from a tv and at least try to keep going

Re:posted a bunch of magic tricks

[Bozzio]

... and the fanboy trolling for this generation begins.
This will be a long 5 or so years...

blow on the cartridge

[Gothmolly]

It's easy, take the cartridge out, blow on the contacts, wave it around if it feels hot, then put it back in.

Re:attention kmart shoppers there is a bule light

[mrwolf007]

Correction.
Its called the "Pulsing blue Dickpunch of sadness", in case you didnt know

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.