First post in a while, been busy but I think this deserves to be said...
Every console manufacturer out there produces their console with the cheapest possible parts and the lowest bidding factory out there. I used to repair PS2 consoles I still do mine occassionally when it gets buggy the crap I seen in those consoles, the chipsets looked cheaper than the ones I found in a 1995 dell computer, seriously... Consoles are made to ensure maximum profit for the manufacturer.
Were the xbox and xbox 360 not to exist due to microsoft's domination of the PC software market there probably wouldn't be a ps3...lets face it nothing nintendo produced hardware wise for several years now even approaches the ps2 for power. The Wii claims it but looking at the graphics and comparing them to the PS2 I'd say "barely scraping up on some of it" Never have I seen a Wii produce graphics equal to the cutscenes of FFX and FFXII not even during a cutscene. Xbox challenged and in many ways exceeded the PS2 for console power, the entire 3rd gen console war exists because Microsoft entered the market. Not to mention if Depression Moon's opinions were reality neither would the Playstation series exist as they for years have dominated the headphone, audio players and in later years TV and DVD player markets. Sega very possibly could be producing consoles alongside Nintendo because it was Sony's PS2 which spelled the end of the Sega line the Xbox merely shovelled the last foot of dirt on top of the coffin and turfed it over again. Gaming essentially would have ground to a halt console wise with the dream cast and game cube/n64 well done the death of gaming.
Now as to the Red Ring of Death and MS knowing about it, the Playstation series has been plagued with overheating since it's creation too, in fact there were several attempts to fix this I've seen the evidence of it when I've ripped the guts out of playstations and playstation 2's to fix them.
Of the PS1 console there were 11 including the mini "PSone" console, common faults were overheat, tray lid issues and power supply. Overheating was due to the depth of the console and the lack of a fan or even a decent heat sink the dream cast suffered this also (they had coolant pads installed in them hence the DC suffered horrendously in their old age from overheat because the pads would dessicate under frequent use thats if the sound and graphics chipsets lasted long enough to wear out the coolant system) The tray issue was simple, the PS1 laser engaged by means of a small button depressed by a peg on the lid without the button fully depressed no play, the peg unfortunately was plastic not metal and over time wore down so that it failed to do this properly this was fixed by either gluing the button in or by applying pressure to the top surface of the console pressing on the lid with heavy books, this in turn could cause your console to overheat faster and also to scratch the disc horrendously. The power supply burnt out frequently the best attempt to fix these issues by Sony were the introduction of the external power supply pack on the PSone. It was ok but introduced 2 pins to the lid of the tray both of which had to engage perfectly for the laser to read properly... DOH!
Of the PS2 there were last I checked around 8 or 9 series of them the insides of these varied wildly the tray mountings, power supply boards, chips everything changed it was a nightmare. However the powersupply issue was still not satisfactory in it's fixing and once more they'd gone back to internal supply boards meaning if one of those burnt out it'd blow the consoles other boards too. The disc trays would jarr and jam regulary and worst of all the laser would "lose synchronisation" often for either just dvd or cd but sometimes for both. Theres around 70 different laser settings 1 will enable both dvd and cd play the only way to re-tune the laser is to move a small white cog one click at a time test and repeat until it is found. It was never solved afaik.
As for the PS3 they get hotter than an oven I've seen people fry bacon on their ps3 by lifting the plastic shell casing off the sealed internal components. How hot do you want your console to go that hot that it can fry your breakfast, what if that were to be carelessly up against paper or clothes? it could possibly set fire to your house! Also would Sony please stop dicking around with the hardware, either they're keeping the backwards compatability (which no matter what you do makes ps2 games look crap too from what I've seen even nice ones like FFX) or they aren't not to mention the hdd ect also may I ask why they stupidly announce on release day for the 80gb console that they're doing a bigger one for the same money within a year...imbeciles we shifted less than 10 that day thanks to that! (I work for HMV)
On the contrary Microsoft's entries of the Xbox and 360 have also had issues, the Xbox would randomly need a service by microsoft, this was something me and a friend tried to avoid but the Xbox was half empty casing half a metal box with the console inside, without the big ass shell supporting the 4 ports and on button an Xbox actually could have sat in a shell roughly the size of a ps2.
The 360 has it's fated ring of death and the scratching issue which I've seen on every console from the sega saturn upwards it happens was very common with the ps2 because the laser would often become lifted from it's runners or they'd lose lubrication and it'd become stiff.
I've not mentioned the Wii my friend has one, he had one before this overheating with a thing that size is an issue also my opinion is that in natural use the first thing to break is going to be the wii remote because it relies on weights hitting micro-switches to detect movement once a micro-switch breaks it's done for good and you need a new remote.
Overall getting back on topic, pretty much every console ever released in the history of gaming has issues as does pretty much every version of windows released (I ignore mac users and linux in this because the vast majority of games are not natively compatable with either os) XP hated old games such as Fallout with a blind passion even with all compatability modes on. Vista actually in that regard is slightly better but we're not talking computers we're talking consoles. Flaws are an inherent issue in the days of tape or cartridge gaming the problems were often things like; contacts scratching/wearing away, batteries inside games keeping data storage facilities alive (if I recall correctly they worked similar to the bios chip in a computer on a battery powered storage ram chip) meaning games would become unsavable ect ect now the issues are from discs scratching and the lasers losing their tuning or trays jamming. What I get at with this is that gaming has never really changed all consoles have had and will have issues. The best warranty service I ever heard off even Sony accept cost them too much to warrant doing it on the ps2 or 3 which was no matter how old your ps1 was they'd free of charge replace it with a reconditioned ps1 and fix yours up in a trade the console around thing. The ps2 cost £70 to send to Sony (though they always accepted them and never once queried the damage even if a PS2 was missing half of it's insides canabalized to repair another PS2) and get replaced I don't even know if they offer that service to the ps3 users out there.
End of day Xbox Live is a better more stable server system and I'm willing to pay the £39.99 a year (actually I'll be getting that for like -30% once my discount card comes through :P) for Xbox Live Gold membership and the Xbox itself has many great titles out there many of them unique to that format and many underrated titles too like Too Human (the game is fun to play) are uniquely on the 360. The PS3 on the other hand offers Ratchet and Clank and MGS4 as it's main temptations for unique titles and I'm sorry but however much I loved MGS 1 - 3 I will not pay £300 for a console to finish the story, I'd rather wait until a friend has a desire to loan me their ps3 and let me complete it or just give me access to it.
Microsoft have enhanced their warranty and I'm pretty damn sure if the Red Ring of Death is still a common problem when the 3 years is up they will rescind the 3 years and move to 5 or 6 even though the Xbox 360's successor is in development. It seems Microsoft underestimated their launch popularity possibly because of their experience with the less than riotous Xbox launch it seems however that the company has learnt from experience and is now making an effort to minimize the consumer damage it suffers from this.
Final words on the matter: No console is perfect they all have flaws and yeah so some idiot at microsoft got sacked for saying that MS knew they'd suffer issues? I bet if some idiot at Sony said "hey the PS3 has heat issues and Sony knows it!" they'd get fired too. he essentially slammed his employer completely and publicly when he's paid however many thousand dollars a year to back them up? It was gross misconduct and I'd have sacked him too he thoroughly earnt his dismissal and thats all there is to it. If you were to go on the news tomorrow and say "my employer smurfed up big time and guess what, they knew it would happen!" you'd get sacked for gross misconduct too even if you only worked for Walmart so why is this suddenly any different?
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Originally Posted by Vyk
