My PS3 has started acting up recently. While playing Bioshock Infinite a few days ago, I received a disc read error that forced the game to close. I launched the game again and immediately started experiencing other problems: audio for dialog in the game would not play, I entered a new area and got stuck in an endless, or infinite :p , load screen. After restarting the PS3, the game disc didn't appear in the XMB.

I finally unplugged the PS3 and left it for a few minutes. I started it up again, and everything worked fine. I was able to continue playing for another 30 minutes before stopping for the night.

Yesterday, I started playing again. After about 30 minutes of playing with no issues, I entered a new area and got stuck again in an endless load screen. I restarted the PS3, launched the game, and attempted to load my save. Again, I get stuck in an endless load screen.

I restarting my PS3 several times, and experienced more problems. Sometimes the game disc wouldn't appear in the XMB, and other times the game would appear in the XMB, but wouldn't load. I tried a few other disc games and experienced the same problems.

I suspect that the Blu-ray drive in my PS3 is failing. Has anyone else experienced this before? I've done a bit of searching on Google, and advice ranges from "The Blu-ray lens is dirty, insert a straw into the drive and blow", to "The system is corrupted, performed a factory reset" to "The Blu-ray lens/drive is dying, it needs to be replaced".

My PS3 has started acting up recently. While playing Bioshock Infinite a few days ago, I received a disc read error that forced the game to close. I launched the game again and immediately started experiencing other problems: audio for dialog in the game would not play, I entered a new area and got stuck in an endless, or infinite :p , load screen. After restarting the PS3, the game disc didn't appear in the XMB.

I finally unplugged the PS3 and left it for a few minutes. I started it up again, and everything worked fine. I was able to continue playing for another 30 minutes before stopping for the night.

Yesterday, I started playing again. After about 30 minutes of playing with no issues, I entered a new area and got stuck again in an endless load screen. I restarted the PS3, launched the game, and attempted to load my save. Again, I get stuck in an endless load screen.

I restarting my PS3 several times, and experienced more problems. Sometimes the game disc wouldn't appear in the XMB, and other times the game would appear in the XMB, but wouldn't load. I tried a few other disc games and experienced the same problems.

I suspect that the Blu-ray drive in my PS3 is failing. Has anyone else experienced this before? I've done a bit of searching on Google, and advice ranges from "The Blu-ray lens is dirty, insert a straw into the drive and blow", to "The system is corrupted, performed a factory reset" to "The Blu-ray lens/drive is dying, it needs to be replaced".

I had a Blu-ray drive issue 19 months ago when Uncharted 3 came out.

After a while I narrowed the issue down to my Blu-ray player couldn't read double-layers blu ray discs but was fine with the simple single layers ones.

I ended up buying a new PS3. ( so now I have 2, one that plays every game and one that only plays single layer blu rays).

To check if it is a similar issue try older games that are on single layer blu rays ( Aside more MGS4, most of the first years games are single layers)

Do the downloaded games still work properly? If yes, it'll probably be the disc drive. Try a movie or a music CD to be certain. The disc drive of my PS3 fat died about one year ago. But it worked fine and suddendly it wouldn't load any type of content from disc on the XMB. The loading circle would turn forever. I had to replace the console...