Sony pulls PlayStation 3 software update Sony has been forced to withdraw the anticipated 2.4 PS3 firmware just a few hours after the update became available, because the new code has apparently been playing havoc with consoles. Patrick Seybold, Sony's public relations bigwig, last night posted a message on the official PS3 blog admitting that the consumer …
This will be of joy to a chap I know- his launch console was bricked by the update and Sony customer service said they would charge him £250 to fix it as it was out of warranty.
My understanding is the update FUBARS the hard drive, so any fix will lose all the save games and data on the HDD anyway.
Looks like Sony are following MS a little too closely ;)
After hours of MGS post-update too.
It seems to be something to do with the HD, maybe a download, or large file, video thumbnail, or something in common is choking the bootup sequence.
The solution seems to be either to pull out the HD and stick another one in, so you will get to the XMB and hopefully things stabilise, or put your old drive into a PC and format it there if you don't have a spare 2.5". Or send it back, your choice.
So it doesn't seem to be killing consoles, like the RROD does, its just the firmware encountering *some* bloody thing on some users drives, thats throwing it into a loop.
Get rid of the thing, and your system is back up.
It was up for quite some time.
I updated (without any problems) at 7AM UK time yesterday, my work collegue updated his 7PM lastnight, so it was up for at least 12 hours.
I don't know anyone personally that's had issues with this update, so I would suspect any problems are pretty isolated. That won't stop the fanboys from jumping around in joy/dismay however...
If you think about it, Sony really had no other option, the risk of a million consoles being bricked because of the update was far more risky, than suspending the update and investingating...
Perhaps next time, they should consider a open beta of firmware. Release it online via the PC download method for a couple of days, and let the clued up download it via USB key, and then roll it out via PSN after they have some confidence that there are no gremlins there...
It goes to show that the old-fashioned notion of "warranty" means nothing when companies are forcing new firmware onto the console at a whim.
They broke it, they need to fix it. It should be illegal to charge money for that "service" even if the console is out of warranty. I'd be inclined to take that to the small claims court or even find someone to start a class action.
It's like a Ford engineer comes to your house and messes with your tuning to the point the car will no longer start, and then you call Ford and they say they have to charge you to fix it because it's out of warranty. It could be argued that this is a deliberate ploy to make money out of naive users.
And that's on top of the absolute annoyance when you finally clear 2 hours to play GTA IV only to spend 20 minutes of that waiting for a bloody update to download. You can't even queue it. It makes Windows Update look user-friendly.
However ... I have reasonable confidence that Sony will eventually agree to fix the bricked consoles for free. They usually tend to do the right thing, once they have exhausted all possible alternatives.
Plenty people online last night too, so it's by no means widespread.
@AC, they do have betas, I know someone who signed up for them before the launch, but sure, they're "open" as you suggest. But then, wouldn't that just make it worse? These things should be tested in house long before they can get to customers consoles.
I downloaded the update yeterday and installed it via USB. I tend to do it this way now as there are so many updates that i can't be bothered to wait for it when i wanna have a quick blast on a game. Instead i just download them on my PC while i work on something else.
Since installing it last night i played GTA for about an hour with no problems. From these comments it looks like it may just be happening to people doing the update via download rather than from USB.
So it i guess im in the clear. Just hope there are no other problems with the update?!
Sorry I don't believe you. My 60GB launch console failed 2 weeks ago ( not firmware related), phoned Sony, and despite it being outside the 12 month warranty, they hapilly swapped it out (2 day turnaround too, brought me a new one, collected the old one).
Can't praise Sony enough...
I suspect you, or your friend has a hidden agenda with that story...
Seems that given the fact that sony only made a few different types of ps3, that this problem along with the problems encountered when running some of the recent games is down to a dodgy batch of ps3s.
I havent had any trouble with any of the so-called "problem games", like GTA 4 which ran flawlessly on my console, and 2.40 upgrade also installed flawlessly. I have an original 60gb UK console, and it's rock solid compared with the newer versions (from what i have seen).
Have sony started using the same factory as microsoft to make their consoles?
From what i understand, if you've installed it and arent seeing any problems, you are fine.
And if you haven't installed it, you can't (USB waving oddballs aside).
So anyone who can be affected, already has been, this isn't some big disaster. But the xbots won't be forgetting this one in a long while.
My install failed halfway through as described, and just sat frozen at the initial wave screen - no way round it. After Googling for a while, I came across what Joe K mentioned, and reluctantly reformatted my drive with my PC (not before a sector copy though).
After reformatting, it starts up fine, but as soon as I copy the data back to it and try again, same thing. Something is on the disk which it doesn't like - something is on the disk WITH ALL MY FECKING SAVE GAMES ON.
...I thought the UK release of 2.4 was to be made after the US one by at least a day or two.
Either way my PS3 didn't state I needed to download 2.4 last night, so either it wasn't released for UK PS3s or I missed the update before they pulled it.
Either way, the US seem to have been good beta testers for us Brits!
.
@Joe K - This problem has little or no relation at all to the XBox RROD problem! One is hardware related (GPU overheat/bad thermal contact with heatsink), the other is firmware (written code by Sony). No point even mentioning it in the same context.
installed and gamed away all last night quite happily.
@Stewart - XBox has a std 1 year warranty and a 3 year warranty for certain general hardware failures which are indicated by three flashing red lights on the console.
So a firmware update which breaks your hard drive is not covered.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemsetup/xbox360/resources/warrantyfaq.htm
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Even if it is working for you now you'll probably have to update your consoles again when Sony fix it for those affected.
We'll never find out the true numbers affected, and anyone who says they know are completely lying, but must be a relatively high percentage if they've pulled the update.
Maybe Sony will get something right with the PS3 someday.
You will know if you are one of the isolated few, as the Ps3 sits at the bootup screen, with the "wave", and no icons. If you have updated and got past this, everything is rosy, and you have nothing to worry about...
If you are one of the unluky few, you can either wait for Sony to say what they are planning to do about it, or simply format your drive in your PC, and stick it back in, everything will then work again (but you will have lost your gamesaves).
If you get any grief from the Xbots, just point them here:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/01/xbox-360-update-bricking-consoles/
well i downloaded my update from sony direct to a usb stick and everything was fine no hiccups at all i think that the sheer load of peopled doing it (damn yanks) might have corrupted some downloads and caused the problems, no such problems for me though!
i just wonder how this will affect play though? in the past if an update was available you could not play online till you had it, does this withdrawl mean people with the update cant play online? well 11.30 last night i was on and no probs
as for people loosing precious game saves? its your own fault if you dont back them up :P
That's a false alarm, they all do this.
PS3 has 256MB of flash, and currently only ~130MB is used for the OS, the progress bar only shows where it is during the programming phase, so it ALWAYS jumps the last 45% It's just than people only notice this, when they can attribute it to a problem.
The problem SEEMS to be, not with the flashing operation itself, as plonking a new/spare HDD in there, makes the PS3 boot fine, with Firmware 2.40 correctly flashed. The problem seems to be related to Firmware 2.40's ability to cope with some harddisks (perhaps file system corruption, or some other oddity).
My update worked just fine, and I don't have the standard HDD, I have a 250GB Western Digital Scorpio HDD in there, so I don't even think it's down to non standard HDD's (it could be some types of non standard HDD's perhaps...).
Oh this is good. PS3 fanboys have been bringing up the old RROD thing with the 360 for years, despite it not being an issue on 360s built within the last 18months now.
The irony? Whose console is really the one getting bricked now. Even when the 360 was suffering problems it was still worth getting because it had so many high rated, high sales, AAA games whilst the PS3 is now the one getting bricked whilst simultaneously still only has about 2 exclusive games worth playing compared to the 20 or so the 360 has along with the massively bigger and better library of run of the mill games.
PS3 fanboys = pwnt.
I've mentioned this on other forums including sonys own forum. This update did infact semi brick my ps3. Like others have said after the update it reboots and all you get is the wave backgroundscreen and no XMB it just gets stuck.
And yes formatting your hard drive does fix it, but in order to format it you need access to another computer which is a bit bad for those who don't have a PC with SATA. Lucky (or unluckly for me) I could format my drive, I did use Linux to make a DD clone of the drive to an image before I formatted it so if sony ever does fix this i can just DD the image back to my HDD to get my saves back.
I hope they do fix this and the update hasn't corupted my drive I don't really want to lose all my downloaded content and saves.
I installed the update on a 60GB station downloaded directly from the XMB (not via USB) and I haven't had any problems.
I also have a friend who's bluray drive failed outside the warranty, that was done on a next-day swap out service for a brand-new console (at least it looked brand new)
That is the best course of action.
What what is known, Firmware 2.40 will install perfectly OK, on good consoles, however it seems if you have a HDD with errors on it, then Firmware 2.40 is less resilliant, and will refuse to boot.
If you image the HDD, you can format the HDD, get back to the XMB, flash to newer firmware that fixes the problem, and then image your drive back to how it was, complete with gamesaves intact...
As for idiots that believe they keep their gamesaves when their 360 RROD, that is nonsense, you get someone else's refurb, with the drive formatted...
Whilst this is a problem, it's nowhere near as widespread as RROD (I would guess a few thousand out of the 14m PS3's - work that out as a percent...), and it's not causing any actual hardware damage...
Installed the update (via t'internet) yesterday at around 12:00 GMT no problem, all the new features seemed to work ok, was able to play online for a couple hours, no problems. All good.
Only question is: how do you turn the console off now?? Before 2.40 pressing the PS button on the controller brought up a list of options - one of which was turn off the system, now this appears to be gone. Now it means I need to get up off my ar$e to turn it off. Very inconvenient ;-)
Well done! "PS3 fanboys = pwnt" Wow that's hilarious, you sir, truly have a towering wit and an unsurpassed command of the english language! However there are a few minor, nay trivial points that i'd like to make.
Xbox 360 RRoD we're due entirely to shonky manufacturing by MS, the console HAD to be sent back to MS to be fixed and it cost them $1 billion plus an awful lot of negative mainstream media coverage, hell it was on the BBC news a few times.
The PS3 "bricking" is not a bricking at all but a code conflict issue between the new firmware and a particular file or set of files stored on the HDD. It sure as hell aint gonna need a mass recall of consoles at the cost of vast sums of money, nor is it gonna be reported on anything other than tech sites.
The PS3 has exclusives which will generally stay exclusive to the console for it's entire life. Most Xbox 360 exclusives end up on the PC (where they are generally better with the excepion of Halo 1 & 2, both of which we're appalling conversions, and comparatively average compared to the vast array of FPS's on the PC.)
Now before you explode into a frothing ball of bile-filled hate and start flinging your poo around like a deranged monkey let me just say that the PS3 is FAR from perfect. The stupid SKU changes, the ridiculous "Oh we can do dual 1080p 60fps outputs" bullshit, the "we cant put motion-sensing and rumble together cos it's like hard and stuff" scandal, "that" Killzone 2 video and giant enemy crabs. Historically accurate giant enemy crabs :P
Bottom line is both consoles have their good points and their bad points, wibbling on like a slacked-jawed drooling yokel about how your e-peen is so much better than theirs makes you look like a gormless fuckwit.
I thought that "bricked" meant broken beyond repair - i.e. you now own a doorstop. As you can take the drive out and reformat it, it doesn't really brick the console. The RROD is a hardware failure, so it is a "bricking" event.
Surely backing up your console saves and other content is good practice? Hard drives don't live forever. (Can you replace a 360 hard-drive easily? At least Sony - notorious for requiring non-standard accessories for their products - seem to have been sensible about that.)
Course it does, the big company neglected to do enough checking before releasing something into the wild.
Anyway, at least this is fixable. I'd stick in another drive myself, install the inevitable patch, then put the old drive back in. You'd probably only get your drive wiped if you sent it back to Sony anyway.
And i wonder if this has to do with the PS store update. I hear it caches its icons on the disc now, maybe the cache is getting set up on a duff/full area of the odd HD.
Its a headache alright.
Dear AC,
The exact words m'colleague spoke were:
"Ok, phoned Sony and as my ps3 is out of warranty I have to pay 250 Euro to get a 60Gb replacement.
(Living in Ireland)
Fuming right now. No other option left open to me I was told. I'm now hoping this issue is big enough to prompt Sony into replacing all impacted ps3s free of charge - not holding my breath though."
I've actually bothered to supply a name, rather than sniping with the benefit of anonimity :)
I have a 60 gig and installed yesterday morning (in the US) and it went fine. I was wondering if I should wait to see if there were issues. Anyway, I wasn't too impressed with the changes. The trophies were the only thing I really noticed, and none of the games I have support them.
The google search from the xmb is kind of useless if you can't do it while in the game. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a game and wanted to search for info about the game I'm playing and would love to just pause, switch over, do the search, and go back, but no. You have to quit, even now with the in-game xmb. What a half-assed addition.
I still like my PS3 better than the xbox, though. It hasn't done anything like an RRoD yet, and my xbox died 3 times before I traded it for the PS3.
Got To agree with you mate.
I work for EA and get the misfortune of making games for both of these consoles which presents a fair amount of smoke and mirrors
For example;
The current office grumble is;
Our new "1080p" PS3 games that only have 1080p menus but the rest is 720p yet its called a 1080P game?
I could cite many more for both consoles but I'd no doubt get shafted!
Bring back the saturn thats what i say!
Well done i managed to post a link from november 2006.
Look i can do it again:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/24/sony_ps3_loss/
But look, its extremely recent.
THATS BECAUSE SONY HAS BEEN GETTING BAD PRESS SINCE THE CONSOLE CAME OUT FOR MULTIPLE REASONS.
The 360 had one bad piece of publicity so I'm just going to have to recycle that one every time I have to try and offset something someone says that makes the PS3 look bad.
Everyone who has had bricking probs, just format your HDD and lose your game saves. This is just like when you send your 360 back to MS and they wipe your HDD. Although i made the 360 bit up, that doesn't actually happen, i know because when i sent mine back i kept my HDD because believe it or not, i'm quite sly.
Sony have really screwed up again, and i keep having to make up for their mistakes. I really don't know why i bother.
"As for idiots that believe they keep their gamesaves when their 360 RROD, that is nonsense, you get someone else's refurb, with the drive formatted..."
That's not true, check your facts. The 360 drive is easily removable and comes off at the push of a button. When it breaks you send it back without the drive.
IMHO neither console is good enough for 1080p 60fps (True HD as Kaz likes to call it), the only thing which can do it is the PC :)
Ok i got a question for you, as an insider to the whole development game, can you give a no-bullshit. unbiased assessment of the potential of each platform? From my limited vantage point it seems that the Xbox is orders of magnitude easier to code for but the PS3 has more theoretical power but is much harder to unlock. Is that close to the truth?
Oh and when is the next SSX coming out??? :D
Totally correct. My sons 360 got the RROD a couple of months ago. Removed the HD, sent it back, took 4 weeks (Sony delivers a refurb within 48 hrs) and in my case, I got the same console back.
I installed the 2.4 update on my PS3 at 4pm last night. Took 3 mins 40 secs to download. After installing, it rebooted the PS3 and presented me with a message along the lines of "Incorrect HD".
I turned it off at the back. Turned it back on, it came up fine and every things working 100%, all game saves there.
There have been a few people on the Sony Forum saying the update made their consoles unusable though
The 360 hasn't got a 3 year warrenty as standard, it has a 3 year warranty for one fault only, a known fault, the RROD. If you phone up with a 14 month old console and say your consoles hanging, and you haven't got the RROD, it will not be covered (of course the sensible thing to do would be to blatantly lie and say it does have the RROD)
Firstly SSX is a different studio from mine im afraid :(
As for the un-biased view,
Im a 3D Artist so couldnt really give you an in depth view from say our programmers or hardware guys but from a 3D artwork point of view we have less constraints when using the 360.
I do know we are developing more 360 games and considering making more multiplatform games 360 and PC only and dropping PS3
Maybe the most telling fact is the majority of people that work here all have 360's at home and we all got a choice of either a free wii,ps3 or a 360 with 360 the most popular.
But I dont know how much water that argument holds when we all have a wii,ps3 and 360 on each of our desks anyway.
First of all, we've all become very casual about firmware updates haven't we? I mean, it used to be that a firmware update was a Bios update only. Now with the 360 and PS3 it's the entire OS on the console. Of course even when Windows service packs arrive, how many people simply click 'OK' to install without a thought? I know I'm guilty of this.
So, perhaps, just perhaps mind, before we download and install the latest and greatest firmware, we'd be well advised to perform a backup to USB of our game save data and user profiles? Game updates and anything else downloaded from the PS Store can easily be re-downloaded. Backups. Who'd have thought they would come in handy? Basic procedure for upgrading the OS/Firmware on any computer should be to backup your data. Buy yourself a 4GB USB drive and slap it into the system and backup before doing the firmware update. That way if the update knackers the HDD, you can reformat your HDD and start over, restoring everything from your backup.
Just a thought.
To the rest of the Anon Cows and fonbois of various consoles here's a couple more thoughts. 1) the number of PS3s having a HDD issue during this update is by no means large, nor is it even a fraction of the failure rate of the RROD on 360. To dismiss the RROD as if it was just this small one off problem is kind of like living in Kansas and dismissing a Tornado as a one off event. 2) one stalled and soon to be replaced firmware update does not a console kill. 3) No, Sony fanboys, this isn't insignificant either, it's real news and will be reported and discussed. 4) post update the PS3 is not acting weird or making funny noises, you are simply far more observant at this time because a) you just updated and are looking for any problems that may occur, and b) you've read reports of the update bricking systems and so you're hyper vigilant looking for issues. Therefore every oddity or noise that you'd have ignored before is suddenly of great importance, even though it really isn't. Finally 5) Why is is that no matter the article whenever these consoles are mentioned the usual fanboy arguments always get trolled out as if they are relevant? Are your reading comprehension scores really that low?
Yes, I wrote the first comment from memory, and then went back to look at it. There is currently a 317 post thread on the matter on the popular forum of website www.eurogamer.net. Whether it is Euros or GBP is a moot point however as initially the chap was told by Sony customer care he would have to pay. However much you wish to derail my point with pointless pedantry, you sir are doomed to failure.
Perhaps they pulled it because they didn't get the code in this rootkit just right, and were afraid Mark Russinovich would make fools of them again... this time with their game console.
It's okay to have a PS3, just ensure you unplug it from your entertainment system after use and pull the power cord!
Hmm EA (or your corner of EA at least) are considering dropping PS3 development? I'd be surprised if that happened as i've read a number of analyst analyses of the console market and they all say the PS3 will be outstripping sales of the 360 sooner rather than later. But then again analyst analyses is like saying military intelligence so who know what to believe :P And besides the really winner this time around is the Wii by a country mile but both MS and Sony pretend it doesn't exist :)
Anyway thanks for the word from the inside and as for have one of each on your desk... its a tough life :P
But it's probably a month or two ago...
I came home and noticed the blue light on my console, fired it up and read a message that there was a new firmware available, and would I like to update now?
A couple of clicks and a minute or two later, my console was rebooted and ready to use again...
Or, I could have ignored the message and started one of my favorite games, secure in the knowledge that I could always do it later...
Probably shouldn't mention the name of the console.
(Not because it pisses off all the M$ and Sony fanboys, but because it's so ridiculous... )
Now, back to playing Grandia II on the DreamCast.
Updated my < 3 month old 40GB model to 2.40 without a hitch so it's not a "problem with newer models".
I had already (and recently - like, in the past week) upgraded the 40GB HDD in my PS3 to a 120GB unit. Also without a hitch.
The 2.40 update went smoothly despite my PS3 having been upgraded by me.
I can't help but wonder if there might be something extraordinarily unusual about the "victim" machines, or perhaps something as simple as a corrupt download or dodgy HDD sector (does the update/download service incorporate a verification checksum procedure? I would have thought so, but....?)
Paris because she knows that trophies are for boys - real men don't need to compare theirs with their friends.
Indeedy Mr Tom (Bramwell?).
Besides accusing the main editorial part of the site with bias is again a moot point, the forum does pretty much its own thing and a lot of the regulars don't venture "abroad" to the front page much. There are plenty of devs and programmers registered on there and "fanboy" threads tend to get stamped on pretty quickly.
Pausing with the PS button is not recommended, it only pauses the game if the developers have put in support for it, which few will have.
MGS is not paused when you do that(at least not fully), so the drive is still busy.
As for the firmware disaster, latest theory is people using custom themes (of which there are hundreds) buggering things up as it tries to load the custom icons and fonts in on XMB startup.
Makes sense, and explains why Sony missed it, tough to test all those things.
Firmware has nothing to do with the hard drive, except its stored there BEFORE flashing the rom chip , erase the hard drive if you want but its a waste of time you will still have the last firmware you installed on there, there is no way to remove it, sony shouldl just bring out a 2.41 that overwrites.
although i have had no issues at all since install , very disapointed i cant play form the meida servers whilst in game though, i have noaudio on my ps3 hard drive itself so its pretty useless, i guess if i really wanted i could copy some stuff across but.
so now we want
In Game Media Server Access
In Game Google Search Access
Plenty of more updates to go though im sure : )
I didnt mean all PS3 development just certain titles that I could not confirm here.
The one I could confirm since its already been anounced would be red alert 3.
As for Mr Rockstar,
Your right mate I should deffo tell you my name and that I work on the 2nd floor of our guildford studios currently working on the next harry potter game I should also give you my NI number to make the job of my boss even easier I mean why wouldnt he mind me posting this stuff?
As Abe says, EA is a big company and different departments are doing different things. I too have heard from a few people that some titles that aren't expected to make a profit on the PS3 have been dropped from that platform. Different consoles have different demographics, and there's also the question of counter-programming - e.g. going PS3-exclusive for a while wasn't much of a problem for Epic's UT3, when the original release date would have meant it would have been competing for 360-owners' money with Halo 3.
Just the other day they announced a whole new brand for EA Sports Wii exclusives, for example; meanwhile your more traditional ones won't be going there.
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