It is pretty much impossible to know failure rates this early. That 0.4% failure rates could be true at this moment when consoles have been out just few days. Actual failure rates can be known only after when consoles have been out for at least 6 months. Even around 99% of the initial Xbox 360 consoles didn't fail right after they were out of the box, it took usually minimum several months of use for failure. Heck, few people even knew about RROD during first couple months.

One thing you have to remember about failure rates... They can only get worse as time goes by, they never get better. You can have 0% failure rate within first day but 50% failure rate after 1 year. And pretty every electronics device have almost 100% failure rate after 20 years.

Failure rate are below the normal level... I don't see what the issue here.

there is no issue, there's just some people who love to make mountains out of molehills.  this is the internet, where negativity runs wild on you like Hulkamania. 

There were no credit card thefts during the outage that I am aware of, as much as the media hyped it up. 

And this issue is nowhere near as serious as the RROD, dont even try to make that connection in any way possible

Failure rates are actually normal, its just we are not used to a launch of this scale, obviously if you are shipping twice to three times the number of the biggest launches of the past, then the standard failure rates are going to cause twice to three times as many dead consoles being reported.

Perspective people, keep it.

Come on now dude. They are not at work 24/7 and I doubt they are that sad that they actually look into it.

I doubt its many, I doubt its a long term issue, but your friends can hardly know everything about their stores let alone thousands across teh country. Sure none were returned while they were at work or that they saw, but I doubt they are paying that kind of attention to the returns for 1 single product and are sitting in the CS area 24/7 since launch.

Asking for something you are not doing yourself is a bit silly. Its not the biggest launch in history. More Iphones have been sold in less time.

You do not know what the number of failed consoles is.

Sony isnt going to come out and admit anything that makes them look bad unless they have to.

It took them weeks to be honest about the hack.

It took a class action lawsuit for them to admit the PS2 had issues.

Perspective is something maybe you should also get.

Of course they are..... Cause Sony said it so it must be true.... Thats so sad.

We are on a videogames website discussing consoles, this has been the biggest launch for consoles in history, context, get some.

Nobody knows what the true failure rate is, and i never claimed to know, simply that when you are looking at 2 to 3 times the number of consoles shipping then logic would suggest that theres going to be 2 to 3 times as many potentially faulty systems.

No company is going to come forward with an official statement until they are completely aware of the exact extent of the situation, they arent for example going to come forward and say "your accounts and all your information has been comprimised" if theres potential for them to discover days later that infact, only a small portion of information was taken. While it sucks for the end user, at least have the presence of mind to ask yourself WHY they took so long.

Again, a company, ANY company, are going to do their best to downplay or sidestep any issue that can negatively impact their business, this is not something exclusively limited to Sony, but more to the point, entirely not even related to the topic at hand, so why you brought it up is unknown to me.

I clearly have plenty of perspective, and my initial comment about keeping perspective as to the increased potential for reported failures is based on solid and sound probability, try harder dude, try harder.

Don't get me wrong, I get it, I really do, positive Sony news can be hard to swallow for some.

Well they made the console, so they must know, you know!