Yellow Lights and £131
Say goodbye to my PS3, folks, along with my patience.Published 07/01/2010 at 16:20 by Gamoc
I saw yellow on my PS3 yesterday. Then a flashing red. Ironically, this is the Yellow Light of Death that signals the demise of a Playstation 3. It is unrecoverable, so I called Sony to see just how they would screw me over in my quest to get it fixed. £131 and everything on my hardrive. That’s not some weird change system Sony use, they are going to replace my PS3 so I won’t be getting the same PS3 back, which means that, when I stick my hardrive into the new PS3, the new PS3 will automatically treat the wonderful thing to a free formatting. It’s a 320gb hardrive, with only 40gb free.
Putting aside for a moment the ridiculousness of having to pay almost half what I paid for my brand new PS3 when I bought it only to have it replaced by a refurbished machine a year and a half later, let me explain what annoys me the most. Don’t get me wrong, I can not afford £131, so that annoys me, but money is just money. I can download all of my games again and probably even watch the recorded programmes I have from PlayTV online somewhere, but what I can’t replace are my saved games. I have a played a great many games on my PS3. I’ve had it since April 2008, which is a year and 8/9 months. So it lasted about 21 months, which isn’t so good for a console with a 10 year lifespan.
Saying the PS3 will last 10 years is all well and good, but if I have to keep paying £131 to get my single unit replaced every 21 months it’s going to cost me so much money that it simply isn’t worth it – no amount of awesome games are going to convince me it’s worth the price of the console, 4 or so payments to replace it and the price of the games, too.
Now let’s bring back the price of a refurbished replacement. Sony, you made this console, then I paid for it under the assumption that it wasn’t a pile of waste in a black box and wouldn’t have to have it replaced. Twice. This is the second time I’ve had a PS3 die on me, the first time being in April of 2008, when I simply took my 60gb back to Game and got a refund, then bought the 40gb I use now. I used my PS3 properly, I bought games, I have had direct contact with Sony’s themselves and written reviews for them, but my console has screwed me over, closely followed by Sony screwing me over with extortionate costs for replacing the console I had already bought.
This isn’t a great time for you to screw me over at all, Sony. I bought an Xbox 360 a few months before Christmas. You may have heard of them – you know, your biggest rival? Since then I haven’t bought any PS3 games short of Pixeljunk Eden. I even bought multiplatform titles on my 360, some with reason and some I wasn’t even sure why (when I bought Assassin’s Creed 2, for example, I only realised I was buying it for the 360 when I had left Game). My 360 is running perfectly, if a little loud. Sure, I can’t use iPlayer or PlayTV on it, nor can I play any of the PS3 exclusives, and whilst the only 360 exclusive that appeals to me is Left 4 Dead 2, I am considering switching to supporting Microsoft.
I have always maintained that I would be a devout Playstation-prefering guy for my entire life. I did maintain that until this happened, anyway. This is not a great time for you to be testing my patience, Sony. Not a great time at all.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.« Previous 1 2 3 4
« Previous 1 2 3 4
davidjmclare | 08/01/2010 03:35
always on easy
1094 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
Thats two articles from TSA writers pretty much with a month (?) of each other. It must say something about how much you guys play the poor thing! lol.
Watchful | 08/01/2010 08:21
Team TSA: Writer
2084 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
There’s four of us who have had our PS3’s die in the last month or two. In order of failure Robert, Tom, me and Gareth.
plutoniumdragon | 08/01/2010 10:56
Member
248 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
I still have Continuous Play on my 60gb, which they have replaced once already when it “bricked” during a firmware update – and I feel the annoyance, especially about the un-copiable saves.
Definitely needs online backup for game saves – even if it’s only one per game. I really don’t understand why game developers have to lock saves to the console rather than to the account.
That would be just as secure, surely?
plutoniumdragon | 08/01/2010 10:57
Member
248 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
Oops. reply wasn’t meant to go here
Zorkal | 08/01/2010 06:15
Member
16 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Man…I just woke up to find a yellow light too .. January 7 ..Same date as yours
..it makes me feel sooo bad ..I had like 50 videos stored in there ..Didn’t saved a back up or anything ..ahhh.. 
webby_15-0 | 08/01/2010 08:50
Member
174 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
I was going to claim against the manufacturer but unfortunately I had lost my receipt. KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS PEOPLE!
Kevling | 08/01/2010 11:01
Member
2032 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
You should claim against the retailer, your contract is with them, not Sony. And you don’t need your receipt, just some proof of the transactions such as credit card statement, loyalty card points statement etc.
Apnomis | 08/01/2010 11:09
Member
743 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
Do a temporary repair (there are loads of tutorials on YouTube) and then buy a PS3 Slim and use the Transfer Utility to move your data over, I know of at least 2 people that did this and saved their save games. I guess the rumoured cloud-based save storage included in a Premium PSN will be a popular feature…
I also find it kind of ironic that you’re dumping the PS3 for the 360 on reliability grounds, it’s a bit like swapping a 50″ HDTV for a 14″ CRT because you want better picture quality! You could buy a Wii instead, I don’t think I’ve ever read a report about a Wii breaking down!
Ducer15 | 08/01/2010 13:20
Member
173 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Recommendations for trusted 3rd party repairers would be handy. That sounds like the best route to go if your PS3 fails. That way you retain all your hard drive data.
MUKARKAR | 09/01/2010 23:34
Member
1222 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
think i am getting a slim now and sell fat 1, lol