I read daily evidence from Xbox 360 fans that their brand new Xbox 360 failed, that their newly refurbished unit failed, or that their "manufactured this month" replacement from Microsoft failed. I've read a *rumor* that 40GB PS3's have disc read problems, the magnitude of which should have been easily caught in testing.

Anytime someone makes an unsubstantiated claim, I'm skeptical. Especially if it is as outlandish as a 40% failure rate for general electronics. If I hadn't seen the Xbox 360 failure rate many times with my own eyes, I might have a hard time believing it.

People have a tendency to disbelieve the unlikely. The fact that Microsoft sucks so much that they're essentially doing the bare minimum to help their hardware problem is unbelievable and seemingly unlikely. The fact that new units are still failing within weeks or months would seem unlikely if I didn't know it to be fact. The assumption people make is that MS fixed their problems, and it's not true.

Microsoft has a track record of irresponsibly releasing and maintaining unreliable hardware with the Xbox 360. Sony has a track record of rock-solid hardware with the PS3 (not that they can't fail, but it's not common like it is with the 360). So forgive me for considering the daily failure reports that I read from Xbox 360 fans and not immediately believing an unconfirmed rumor that the 40GB PS3 has a 40% failure rate.

Going from a 1-3% failure rate to a 40% failure rate that can be determined within weeks is something that could have easily been caught if there were weeks of testing.  I can't imagine Sony releasing a flagship product without at least some weeks of testing.  Consider that there are often several revisions to each console within a year -- minor revisions, such as using different vendors for your DVD/BD drives, hard drives, etc are much more common than major revisions (new product).  Companies test and release these.  I've never seen a revision take a rock solid product and move it to ridiculous failure rate (more than 10x the failure rate of the previous product).  Have you?

Then you don't remember the coleco adam.  According to: http://www.coleconation.com/070707.html 7 out of 8 were returned to the factory after the first Christmas season.  It ultimately put Coleco on the path to bankruptcy.

But I think that most companies have learned from this...that was the early days of computing.

yeah i thought that was fake

I believe this story. Not the part about forty percent of units sold being faulty. The part about forty percent of buyers coming back returning the units complaining about disc reading errors. Perhaps just perhaps those forty percent of customers brought the machine home, and I do not know stuck a PS2 disc into the machine, and got a message that said perhaps disc reading error.

I am shocked nobody brought this up before, but could the statistic actually be a statistic of how ignorant consumers really are. I could see forty percent of buyers being oblivious to the fact. That would also explain why the story was rescinded. The machines were not faulty. The consumers were just ignorant to the fact that the newer machine was not backwards compatible with their old discs.

The problem has probably been rectified. The store has probably put the units back on the shelf. Then to save themselves some trouble made sure to put up a warning about the machine on the display. Informing the consumer that the backwards compatibility has been removed.

We discussed this at length on these forums. I expect that quite a few PS3s are being returned as consumers discover that it is not backwards compatible. In this case however the staff at the store took the consumers word for it, and did not do a thorough follow up.

@ Dodece - Interesting theory. Likely some truth to it.

Let me be completely honest here.

I believe it is fake despite Sony's claim that it is fake. Yes, Sony's credibility has dropped so far in my eyes I automatically assume that they are bullshitting everyone in anything they say now. And it took 2 years of pure bullshit and arrogance to get that far, it'll take even longer to go back.

But yeah, the 40% seemed far too random and too high to be believable in my opinion.

http://gamed.nl/view/33860
Well they officially refuted it.

If you actually believe that the new model has a 40% failure rate, re evaluate your entire life right now.

You know Montanna, a very funny thing happend to Xbox360 owners who said the same thing...

Well, they pretended the failure rate wasn't that high or that 40% of users are bashing it with hammers.

Just saying... there are a lot of hammers in Belgium.

If you want to support Sony and the PS3, buy one now and bolster the console for the Holidays giving it a chance.

If you want to play it safe, wait it out to see if anything comes of this rumor or not.

FUD or not, the seed of doubt has been planted, I doubt it will affect sales much though.