A friend on mine's PS3 had dies a death. It wont power up at all, we've treid everything we can (using different plugs etc) and nothing works. It gets zero power, no red light.

What he wants to know is how this affects his PSN titles as he uses the game sharing option with his brother which had just been reduced to 2 PS3s from 5. If he just buys another PS3 is there a way he can transfer his games from the broken PS3 to his new one?  Or are they forever tied to a broken unit?

all the games purchased before the 18th of nov afaik will keep 5 activations (only new ones will have the lower amount), so he should be fine - additionally there will be a website you can log into without using your console to deactivate dead PS3s from your account

Buy a new Power supply. You can easily buy them online and repair the PS3 yourself.

You can also find someone who is willing to repair it for a fee. They are quite common.

Doing that will save your hard drive and therefor your data. Doing otherwise will not.