PS3 owners, have you experienced any issues with your console, specifically an illuminated yellow light that signals your unit is as good as dead? If you do, you’re not alone according to BBC and apparently even Sony, though the latter will beg to differ. After a BBC Watchdog program investigating the (increasing?) number of “Yellow Light of Death” occurrences on Sony’s PS3 went live, Sony naturally responded not so lovingly strongly denying the claims. First off, what exactly is the problem? The reason the show highlighting this YLoD even went on air was because over 150 PS3 owners had contacted BBC on the matter stating that their unit stopped working after a yellow light on the PS3 lit up rendering their console a big fancy paperweight. BBC goes even further in their documentary stating that of 2.5m PS3′s sold in the UK since March 2007, up to 12,500 PS3′s have been returned because of this so called YLoD. While not as widespread as the Xbox 360′s RRoD that made it’s rounds a couple years ago, the YLoD appears to be a legitimate problem. Or is it?
Sony meanwhile rebukes BBC’s claims and has stated that “less than one half of one percent of PS3′s display the yellow light indicating general system problems”. Sony goes on to say that the yellow light can be caused by a number of problems and not just overheating or hardware issues as the RRoD indicated and that BBC’s accounts are more or less exaggerated blah blah blah. Typical PR stuff to soften the blow of a massive hardware problem. Though again, out of 2.5m PS3′s, 12,500 affected models isn’t necessarily that large.
One interesting thing to note however is if you take the 2.5m PS3 sales and 12,500 affected models claim and compare it to Sony’s claim of “less than one half of one percent”, you actually do get 0.005% or, one half of one percent. So is it a legitimate problem? You tell me? Personally I don’t see 12,500 out of 2.5m, or including worldwide sales and a few more instances of the Yellow Light anything more than standard the standard margin for manufacturing problems. Though I’m sure the owners of the affected models (which are out of warranty as Sony only covers 12 months with most of these problems occuring 12-24 months in) think otherwise.
Is anyone out there in PS3 land experiencing problems with their unit? Has the dreaded YLoD come to visit? It would be interesting to know the statistics as to the amount of Yellow Light occurances on PS3′s outside of the UK? Anyone care to give us some numbers?
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