They have to catch up on consoles sold somehow, how many people bought a second 360 when it RROD'd? :)

This is not a trolling post, it is an attempt at humor, with some fact, I know I bought an Arcade when my original 360 RROD'd (Was playing Lost Odyssey and near the end and didn't want to wait weeks to play again) :)

there is always a risk when writing to flash (or any) memory that a few 1's could be 0s.
It just sucks more when its a 1 in your boot process/ mandatory file.

On the same boat with you mate. I'm pretty pissed off about the situation. I hope Sony does do something about this, cause I'm going to just not play it at all cause of residence, not taking it with me anyways.

I just saw an online forum where this one dude is making a huge petition and it is growing ever so quickly. I realllllllly doubt this is a coincidence the pattern has developed after recent firmware updates and technology is very fragile, especially high tech at the tiniest levels.

Does that suck?  Yes. 

However nothing changes.  Sony is no where near the trouble MS was in when their systems were breaking down (That stuff was on tv shows, the news, EVERYWHERE!).  Sorry this happened but send it in to get fixed.

Its very rare that any software update can cause hardware failures. Remember, the update had nothing to do with the blu-ray write/read routines. It's not related. I think people are just having bad luck or lying.

It's very very difficult to write something that would cause a hardware failure into your firmware update because you're simply building upon existing code that is tailored to run on that hardware... firmware that doesn't work? sure. Firmware causing hardware failures? It's just not very common.

I really don't think this is the case, it would be nearly impossible to write something that would cause a select few ps3s to fail and not the others.

I managed to get mine working again using the service menu option 3  - at least it's working at the moment...

My brother tried the same thing, it worked for 10 minutes, then froze and crashed again. Failed.

This is just all a little shit if you ask me. I still love PS3, just wish Sony would sort out this problem, and i wish someone could prove that their firmware update caused it so i can get this sorted.

The problem with the Bluray lasers is in all likelyhood just cold solder joints, it is highly unlikely to be a software related failure. In most cases reflowing the solder joints on the laser will bring it back to life. A lot of lasers that are failing on the PS3 now are down to poor manufacturing due to inexperience of lead free solder, it isn't usually the diode that dies.

i have heard about some problems with the old 40gig models but i doubt a firmware update is what sent your console into the crapper.

some consoles will fail and that is just how it is but before you ask if sony will lose any loyal fans because of this just think about this:

did microsoft lose loyal customers from the RROD???

no, they went out and bought new 360's which drove up sales and now they claim their install base is 40 million when its probably 30 million (not trying to troll here as this is probably true to an extent)

so the answer is no. they are not going to lose loyal fans unless the problem happens at least 2 or 3 times. people aren't going to throw away their investment of games and controllers right away because a console broke.