While Sony was celebrating their sale of 1 million PlayStation 4 units on launch day, there were several customers that weren’t as happy.
As early as Saturday morning reports started surfacing that Sony had shipped a number of bricked PlayStation 4 consoles. Meaning that customers took their PlayStation 4 out of the box whether it was purchased at a retailer or shipped from an online merchant, and the machine didn’t do anything.
The Verge reported that 91 separate cases of bricked PlayStation 4 consoles had been reported on popular website reddit.com. Both The Verge and The Next Web reported that a number of customers who purchased their PlayStation 4 through Amazon had given the nextgen game console 1 star reviews, the lowers review you can give an item on Amazon. Over 40% of the PlayStation 4 reviews on Amazon were one star.
Many customers resorted to Facebook and Twitter after getting their PlayStation 4 home and reported that they had to wait sometimes over 3 hours to get an update to load onto the machine. Without the update the PlayStation 4 is useless.
Both Microsoft and Sony instituted a launch day update to insure that any units that got out before launch day needed to wait until the official day to start playing.
Those who bought “bricked” PlayStation 4’s weren’t even able to get as far as the update screen.
Sony released this statement to IGN in regards to the “bricked” systems:
“A handful of people have reported issues with their PlayStation 4 systems. This is within our expectations for a new product introduction, and the vast majority of PS4 feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We are closely monitoring for additional reports, but we think these are isolated incidents and are on track for a great launch.
There have been several problems reported, which leads us to believe there isn’t a singular problem that could impact a broader percentage of systems. The number of affected systems represents less than .4% of shipped units to date, which is within our expectations for a new product introduction.”
Now The Next Web has figured out that not all the systems users think are bricked are actually bricked there is a fix that you can try, although it’s not guaranteed.
“Hold the power button for 7 or so seconds until the system turns off. Make sure your HDMI cable is firmly connected on both sides and turn your PS4 back on. If you PS4 displays a white light, it has succeeded in performing the HDMI handshake and should work fine.”