Well, I bought GTAIV for the PS3 because I thought it was a certainty that my 360 would RROD if I even tried to play it on that system. I brought it home launch day, popped it in, froze a bunch of times so I gave up. Luckily my little brother is obsessed with that Maple Story game so he barely uses his PS3, so I grabbed his 20gb PS3 and GTAIV loaded up fine.

I then read about Rockstars fix for the problem. 12 steps shutting different random features of the PS3/GTA off, in what I would assume is an effort to free up as much RAM as possible to get the game to run. Tried it two times, restarted, then realised that my XMB was loading a little funny. The icons on the XMB had these white boxes around them, and all of them looked a little hazy. Also these white dots began to pop up which looked almost like I had dead pixels on my screen. As as soon as I saw this I said "oh shit", tried to save all my game data to a USB so if anything bad happened I could atleast start my games from where I started.

Then my XMB froze. I restarted, tried to reformat the whole PS3, and it froze yet again. Basically my PS3 is  bricked, even after reformatting a bunch of times. Oddly enough it is behaving a lot like the GTAIV error. It will allow you to move around a little bit but then locks up for no reason regardless of what you're doing.

Those who know me know this isn't some fanboy trying to put a bad rep on the PS3. In fact, I think the Xbox360 is crappy (I still do), but the fact that a game can have this impact on a console is ridiculous. I have searched around and found a few other consoles with the same issues. I am out of warranty, and I bought this console for $600. They dont make the full BC version anymore so I can't go buy a new one.

 TOTAL BULLSHIT. I still get to play GTAIV because of my little brothers PS3, but I want to give you all a bit of a heads up on a situation I think will soon explode on the internet. All launch PS3s can be replaced? Or will Sony just screw us over on an issue that is CLEARLY in the hardware since certain models have the issue.

And to 360/Wii fanboys...STOP LAUGHING! I hate you ....LOL.

So leo-j was right! GTA IV is killing the Wii PS3! All hail leo-j!

Seriously though, sorry to hear that dude. Is it still under warranty?

Edit: Never mind. Reading skills. I swear I gots them. 

well same story here, well almost
i was deciding between an 360 and ps3.
the issues with the rrod and GT5 for the ps3 made me buy a ps3.
only 2 weeks ago the ps3 didnt want to load blu-ray anymore.
and it was a few weeks over warranty.
i called Sony tho and they said it wasnt a problem, im getting my replacement unit this tuesday.it was also a 60 gb model.

i dont know anything about the 60gb/40 gb and i dont really care as long as i get my ps3 back.
its over warranty you know, theyre basicly fixing it but they dont have too theyre just being nice.
so im not gonna bitch about getting a 40 gb if they give me one.
i played some ps2 games on my full hd tv and they look like crap anyway.
compared to playing on a normal tv that is, and with gta4, mgs4 and dmc 4 i dont really feel like ps2 games anyway.

Or I was thinking I would buy and return a 40gb from target that magically gained full BC!

dang that rlly sux

How common is this problem?

I still wonder why reviewers scored this game a 10/10 knowing about this kind of issues, which are not funny btw.

gta4 didnt deserve a 10/10. sure things were improved, but they also ripped out alot of shit and stupid problems occur. not to mention it probably has the worst graphics on a next gen game. i stopped playing it and put in dmc4, and my eyes were finally at ease.

Yea, just like they should have taken points away from Smash Bros and Galaxy for having some discs not work.

Pelease, taking off from the score of a game for isolated incidents is nonsense.

Disc error =/= bricking consoles.