Red Squirrel
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Sony: PS4 Failure Rate More Than Double Initial Estimates
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
BinarySynapse
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Did you try blowing on it?
Of course.
Did you try blowing on it?
EPIC
From all I've read, the real problem has not been the item failures, but their inability to deal with the failures. The PS4 is a flagship product. Sony should have expected launch failures and should have had sufficient staff to deal with calls and procedures in place to deal with returns and send out replacements. They appear to have had neither.
lilbabycat
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I did read somewhere about a solution, that may/may not work.
Which is exactly why I didn't believe Sony's initial claim of .4%, and I don't believe this claim either. Not that I think a ton of PS4's are faulty, but companies have a tendency to downplay failure rate.
sliverjazz
Gawd
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Having an extra box fan blowing into the ports also seems to revive them.
Because, maybe, they think their customers might not care for power bricks? I generally just don't like the things.
I still cannot understand why a launch failure rate of .4% or 1% is an engaging topic...
I could care less. 'Bound to be many more interesting things to talk about with the PS4--and I'm not a console buyer, which makes those other topics a lot more interesting.ShadowSoldier89
Limp Gawd
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why would anyone complain this time Steve, your headline is accurate and not misleading at all unlike the last one.
Ok so say sony's defect rate is 1%. Then you probably have a shipping damage of 2-3x that. I wonder if sony's number is also just for components they design/create. I bet those hard drives have decent defect rates too. So you are probably in the neighborhood 5-10% doa rate.
I'm sure with the xbox having more components for kinect and the hdmi pass through, etc it will have at least the same number of problems. We shall see soon enough i guess.
I'm sure with the xbox having more components for kinect and the hdmi pass through, etc it will have at least the same number of problems. We shall see soon enough i guess.
cptnjarhead
Crossfit Fast Walk Champion Runnerup
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I wonder if sony was trying to cut cost a little too much?. I hope it does not get worse, but based on what i have read, its not just the hatters out there, this is getting bigger than sony wants to admit.
Acceptable? not if yours is DOA.
Feel bad for those who waited so long, just to get a brick-in-the-BOX!
My 50" sony TV is rock solid and i have had zero issues, but i wonder if the PS4 division is not under the same QC or management as their panels?
Acceptable? not if yours is DOA.
Feel bad for those who waited so long, just to get a brick-in-the-BOX!
My 50" sony TV is rock solid and i have had zero issues, but i wonder if the PS4 division is not under the same QC or management as their panels?
NoOther
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But their customers DO care about their systems working. And if these problems are due to faulty soldering as seems likely, heat in the box only makes it worse.
I still cannot understand why a launch failure rate of .4% or 1% is an engaging topic...
It's a topic because there have been soo many reports right at launch. Not weeks or months from launch but right after launch. In addition, as others have mentioned the failure rate is probably higher than 1%. Especially if you start adding up the failures that may happen within the first few months of ownership.
Also if you think other topics are more interesting and this one isn't worth your time...why are you taking the time to post about it?
Ashbringer
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Would you happen to have this list? I wanna know what companies to black list. 1 out 100 PS4 owners sucks to be them.
Just for reference, Google's study of over 100,000 drives, at it's lowest had an average failure rate of 2%. You'd have to blacklist all hard drive companies to start.
NoOther
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Just for reference, Google's study of over 100,000 drives, at it's lowest had an average failure rate of 2%. You'd have to blacklist all hard drive companies to start.
Define that failure rate though. Is that 2% DOA? Or is that 2% failing over time? Those are 2 completely different statistics. And honestly I find that incredibly hard to believe.
Parja
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"Forgot" or "Intentionally did not include on Front Page News to preserve the LOLZ"?
Maybe because power bricks are ugly and inconvenient and something that people generally consider unacceptable in consumer audio visual equipment.
My TV doesn't have a power brick. My home theater doesn't have a power brick. My Blu-Ray player doesn't have a power brick. It's something that separates a game console from the rest of someone's home entertainment system and is associated with their kids toy.
It may seem a bit ridicules, but it is a nicer design, and it improves perceptions of the system.
It depends. If this includes software related problems that are not due to manufacturing defects, the number is well within good performance. If this is all due to manufacturing defects, it is creeping towards the border of being a serious issue, and that's with a product with normal margins. At 0.4% you can just tell yourself the competition is spinning it against you but everything is ok. At 1%, you need to look at what process or part supply chain screwed you.
Ashbringer
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Just for reference, Google's study of over 100,000 drives, at it's lowest had an average failure rate of 2%. You'd have to blacklist all hard drive companies to start.
With a lot of the failed hard drives I deal with, I've gotten very close to black listing all drives. From my experience, I will never buy a Seagate drive ever again, cause their failure rates are so high that they returned me a drive that failed within a week, twice. I also won't buy OCZ SSD's just from word of mouth.
So yea, there's very few hard drive companies I would buy from. Right now Hitachi or Western Digital all the way. Had better experience with Hitachi lately.
With a lot of the failed hard drives I deal with, I've gotten very close to black listing all drives. From my experience, I will never buy a Seagate drive ever again, cause their failure rates are so high that they returned me a drive that failed within a week, twice. I also won't buy OCZ SSD's just from word of mouth.
So yea, there's very few hard drive companies I would buy from. Right now Hitachi or Western Digital all the way. Had better experience with Hitachi lately.
Is there a specific line of OCZ SSD's that are bad? I've never had a hiccup with any of them...
dgz
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So far two vertex 3's died in our office but I am not saying they suck or anything, just sharing my experience.
Phoenix333
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The failure level! It's over 9000!
LeninGHOLA
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That's really close to the 30-40% from the last news post.
With a lot of the failed hard drives I deal with, I've gotten very close to black listing all drives. From my experience, I will never buy a Seagate drive ever again, cause their failure rates are so high that they returned me a drive that failed within a week, twice. I also won't buy OCZ SSD's just from word of mouth.
So yea, there's very few hard drive companies I would buy from. Right now Hitachi or Western Digital all the way. Had better experience with Hitachi lately.
Had 2 WD blacks fail at work. Had 1 Hitachi fail (that I bought specifically because they were apparently reliable). Hard drives are a crap shoot, you could be buying a drive that had an awesomely low failure rate, but the new revision is flaky, or the batch you buy from is flaky. Hard drives are just one of those things I almost just buy them 2 at a time for backups because I just assume they're gonna fail.
I second that. I've purchased more than a few hard drives (personal and work) and the failure rate for every brand is pretty damn high. Although the IBM ("Deathstar") Deskstar series will always reign supreme in my memory.
Well, that has nothing to do with my response, earlier...
Whether the PSU is in the line as a power brick or in the box seems to me either a matter of preference or engineering. Perhaps there isn't enough room in the xBone for its PSU; or perhaps Sony got a lot of feedback objecting to a power brick--I suspect Sony's decision was a mixture of things, just like Microsoft's decision to use a power brick. As to your speculation about "faulty soldering," excess heat, etc., even if correct it's a warranty issue, of course, and therefore really a non-issue. All new products, especially "all-in-one" assemblies like these consoles, have their share of first-production-run issues. That's a given. Nobody likes to be the one who draws the short straw, of course, but when buying new hardware sight unseen in a pre-order, a higher risk of a DOA is only to be expected, regardless of the product.
I haven't seen information on "so many reports," though--I read of a total of 270 Amazon posts, both pro and con, and it's a safe bet that Amazon actually sold between 10x and 100x that 270-post amount during that period. But nobody knows the total number of PS4's Amazon moved during that period because Amazon hasn't released that number and probably never will (unless Sony asks them to, I'd imagine), so estimating a failure rate based on voluntary Amazon posts is impossible. The one guess of a 30%-40% failure rate was off by a factor of 30x-40x, according to Sony, who now says the *real* failure rate according to actual customer complaints filed under warranty was ~1% for the period. Sony has so far released the only total shipment numbers anyone has published for that period--1M in the first 24 hours.
My opinion is that even if the failure rate is > 1% (and as time moves on you may well be right that it will be for first-day sales), I think it is a non-issue for the reasons stated above. New product, first-production-run, etc. Happens with every new product like this.
What I meant about "other topics" is discussions about the various game resolutions developers are using with the two consoles, comparisons of audio outputs, comparisons of console operating systems--things of that nature. Articles which directly involve the hardware differences between the two consoles. Fast forward three months from now into 2014, and if one or both console makers are still reporting excess numbers of manufacturing flaws, then it will be newsworthy because we will have long eclipsed first-run production products and be into the second or third, etc., production runs.
Parja
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You really have to consider a hard drive a wear item. They'll all fail eventually. Except, like you mentioned, in the case of Deathstars. For them, eventually = soon.
That_Sound_Guy
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Japanese technology, American Technology, Anyone's Technology..
All Made In China!
(modified movie quote)
"American components, Russian components... ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!"
/Armageddon
Well it's the customers that are revealing it, anyways.
Interesting topic...! Hard drives. I believe I have been exceptionally fortunate. In the past 25 years or so since I bought my first hard drive (a 40 Megabyte--yes, MB--scsi 1 from Great Valley Products for my Amiga 2000, circa 1987/88, IIRC, costing me a stiff $500.00, including controller), I think I've had maybe three hard drive failures out of the dozens of drives, easily three dozen, I've owned during that entire period! (Failure = the drive just seizes and will no longer run.) And I've never had a DOA experience with a hard drive I bought for myself at home.
All the other drives were still functioning when I either gave them to relatives or sold them (mostly donated to "needy" kids and the wife.) While that might appear to be approaching 10% failure, bear in mind that as this is over 25 years or so, the failure rate is actually far lower. Maxtor, WD, Seagate--I ran all of them until Maxtor was sold and ran them in fairly equal distributions as I had no particular favorite brand. Bang-for-buck was my largest consideration, and these were all so-called "consumer" drives, too. (Anyone remember those gigantic 5 1/4" hard drives? I had at least one--called a "Bigfoot," or something.
That thing was a tank!)Anyway, what I discovered early on was that it mattered a lot *where* I bought my hardware and what kind of hardware I bought. I stayed away from so-called "OEM" bargains (with 30-day warranties) or "refurbished" drives (from Dell, lol) and that sort of thing. I looked for good buys on new, 1st-tier, name-brand drives with great warranties. I think I got my money's worth. These days at home I'm running 2.32 TB's consisting of 2 Seagate 500GB 7200rpm S2 Barracudas in a RAID 0 configuration (three years old); a 320GB S2 Seagate drive (also three years old), and a S3 WD Blue 1TB 7200 rpm drive (about a month old--64mb cache & very fast.)
Godmachine
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Even if it ends up in reality being 5 percent , that's still head and shoulders above 35 percent for the RROD (again 35 percent reported so probably higher).
No matter what Sony does now I do not think they could even come close to fucking up the way Microsoft did.
The important lesson to remember from all of this is even with a huge failure rate and $1 Billion repair campaign .. the Xbox 360 still comes out on top. You can recover from such an event.
As long as you handle it well and you can afford the loss. Microsoft did good in both parts. They extended the warranty to cover this issue for 3 years instead of the standard warranty that you got, which normally you had to pay for longer warranty. And then they were able to afford to take that sizable of a hit. Sony can't.
Another thing that that is slightly different is the time frame. You didn't have 35% RROD on day 1. That is what is making things appear real bad right now. There are all these issues on day 1 out of the box. These aren't people using it for a few months and it failing, these isn't even all 1 million even opening them to try them yet. this is a certain fraction that have opened them, 1% of those being dead out of the box. and who knows how many others waiting to fail in the next few months.
But only time will tell how things go for both sides.