There is a rumour floating around the internet that Chinese students were forced to manufacture the PlayStation 4 as part of an internship and, due to poor working conditions, they have sabotaged the PlayStation 4 launch, causing the reports of broken PS4s that you’ve seen.
The students were taking an internship at the Foxconn plants and were told if they did not work overtime and night shifts, their diploma would be withheld and they would fail their course.
Foxconn had admitted to the problem in October and released a statement: “Immediate actions have been taken to bring that campus into full compliance with our code and policies,” the company said. This includes “reinforcing the policies of no overtime and no night shifts for student interns, even though such work is voluntary, and reminding all interns of their rights to terminate their participation in the program at any time.”
The story took a twist on August 28th with a post on the IGN boards, allegedly from one of the students: “Since Foxconn are not treating us well, we will not treat ps4 console well. The ps4 console we assemble can be turned on at best.” The post was from an account created just one day previous and was quickly deleted.
Some have suggested that reports of PlayStation 4s failing – or being broken straight out of the box – may be due to the sabotage by a student. However this is almost certainly not true, as after assembly electronic devices should go through quality assurance checks so any sabotaged PS4s would have surely been discovered at that point.
Electronics firms do not create devices, shove them in a box and ship them – they are always tested. In fact, Foxconn in particular have been in the news for implementing rigorous quality controls.
A verified PS4 fitter from the Foxconn Yantai plant, where 98% of PS4s are being made, has been posting on a message board over the weekend and has said the chances of failing inspection are “very low”. He also denied that workers were deliberately sabotaging units by spitting on them.
There does seem to be one very simple reason why some consoles are not up to scratch, “Everyone wants a good machine but the workers are doing every day tired, it is inevitable there will be bad machines,” explained the fitter.
When you are making millions of consoles with a tired and overworked production line, shoving them in container ships and transporting them across the globe, somewhere along the way a minority of consoles will fail. There is also the possibility of user error, as Kotaku have recently fixed their “broken” PS4 which was having problems with the HDMI output.
“The good news here is that the problem was small and easily fixed. The slightly bad news is that we’re unable to tell you why this happened. It’s certainly possible that we accidentally knocked that piece of metal upward when we first plugged Sony’s HDMI wire into the PS4. We can’t rule out human error on our end.”
Other issues, such as the “Blinking Blue Light” error which many Amazon reviewers have reported, may be down to incompatible televisions or a loose hard drive. Sony have released a guide to help with this, which you can access here.
It should be noted that many of the negative 1 star Amazon reviews are from trolls, “I did not have any playstation, i just want to prove that anyone can leave a feedback to kill a brand and discourage people from buying it,” explained one helpful reviewer.
However, with over a million consoles shipped in the United States, Sony are reporting that 0.4% of them are having problems. “A handful of people have reported issues with their PlayStation 4 systems,” they told IGN.
“This is within our expectations for a new product introduction, and the vast majority of PS4 feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are closely monitoring for additional reports, but we think these are isolated incidents and are on track for a great launch.
“There have been several problems reported, which leads us to believe there isn’t a singular problem that could impact a broader percentage of systems. The number of affected systems represents less than 0.4 per cent of shipped units to date, which is within our expectations for a new product introduction.”
The problem for Sony is that since most of the people with defective systems have access to the internet, a relatively small number of failures can be blown out of proportion and become and worldwide epidemic of failing consoles. If social media had existed when the PS1 was launched, I expect we would have had the same headlines, in fact I would put money on next weekend’s headlines including a couple of stories of Xbox Ones failing and how the internet is outraged.
It sucks if you are one of the few who got a dodgy console, but there is absolutely nothing that anyone – including Sony – can do to prevent issues like this at launch.
Actually that is not entirely true, Sony could insist on using on the finest manufacturing techniques, the best quality components and ensuring Foxconn employees have decent working conditions and a good wage, but then your PS4 would cost £1,000, not £350. Even then, they could not guarantee the console would never, ever fail because, well, shit happens.
At the moment there is no firm proof that consoles are failing for any specific reasons but there is proof that Foxconn are overworking their employees yet again. That, perhaps, is more of a story than a small number of consoles failing to play Killzone Shadow Fall.
Source: MCV / Quartz / Kotaku Image sources: iFixIt / TheNextWeb
The Von Braun
@Tuffclub:That ethical console, would probably cost a bloody fortune and sorcing your labour/manufacturing to the USA would only be the start of the problems.
Where you going to source any number of the raw materials your chipsets etc would need? (coltan, gold, wolframite, cassiterite, tungsten, tin etc etc) as so much of it is mined from conflict areas, where money used to fund weaponary etc, mined under slave labour conditions.
Seem to recal Nintendo came under fire a while back by a protest group as they were shy in saying just where they got their raw materials from.
Then of course there’s the issue of packaging, solevents, inks etc used as well as paper and cardboard, does your manufacturing plant have a safe means of disposing of used solvents? is the carboard coming from recycled source? just how much water and chemicals are used in that recycling?.Then you’ve transport….you name it.
Ethics and consumer electrical goods have yet to work out a workable game plan, but i’d love for someone to really break down just how much a PS4 or Xbox One would cost if you ticked every ethical box, from enviromental to human rights.
salvodaze
I’d love to see that too, I wonder if the a managable cost is possible without compromising too much in terms of ethics. Maybe it’s just that the idea is too scary for the decision makers in charge.
bigchrissyc
Probably over blown. Its only a tiny amount of units shipped so hopefully all will be well for Europe.
matthangzhou
As someone just back from 7 years living in china I would say that the Chinese don’t really have this malicious bone in their body. They also cannot risk on losing out on an internship or a degree with competition being as fierce as it is. I would say these rumours are almost definitely fabricated.
bunimomike
Were you deported for spitting on the factory line?
matthangzhou
No…putting an appendage in an hdmi slot but that’s another story.
I do love sony. Literally.
Tuffcub
Yes, I did consider mentioning that but I dont know enough about it to make a statement
wonkey-willy
i can vouch for these workers.
i work on a production line and by the end of an eight hour shift i tend to start lagging,especially on nights.
but the attitude of Sony sucks its never their fault and all you get is some lame arse fix.
read on the psn forums that units blue lighted out of the box and all Sony offered was an extension on the warranty.
swieep
Nice peace to read.. well done..
wonkey-willy
http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/bd-p/22090
makes for an interesting read
KittDJW
Some scary reading :( First time I knew people had any issues with it ejecting and not taking disks. here’s hoping again it’s just a very small number of machines that has the issue.
Moonpie
0.4% = about 4,000 consoles out of every 1,000,000 to have that low a failure rate on a new release is really good. Lets see how XBOX do and the PS4 in Europe
salvodaze
Noticed a few typos if you want to correct them:
that that
Electronics firm do not…
verfied
That said, I still find it quite disturbing that such varied problems are occuring with a noticable number of consoles. Also, saying that if better processes were implemented the console would cost 1000 pounds is a bit oversimplified, surely they already should have enough testing to avoid such consequences, otherwise this would be the industry standard. I’ll be monitoring the EU launch until it’s released here in December and see if it’s the same.