Watchdog PS3 segment falls flat

A feature on the Sony PlayStation 3 on BBC’s consumer rights show Watchdog last night has left the UK games industry unimpressed thanks to a string of inaccuracies and questionable data.

Kicking off with the claim that PS3 costs 400 – something that hasn’t been true for nearly two years – Anne Robinson and co-presenter Iain Lee made a string of claims regarding PS3 reliability that not only flew in the face of Sony’s claims, but also seemed incredulous to those who own the machine.

Watchdog also boldly stated that 12,500 UK machines had suffered the ‘yellow light of death’, a conclusion drawn from Sony’s claim that 0.5 per cent of the UK’s 2.5m PS3 install base had suffered issues of some description.

However, the show neglected to mention that not all reported problems are related to the YLOD. More significantly, it also brushed over the fact that a 0.5 per cent failure rate is extremely low for any piece of modern consumer electronics.

Sony was also lamented for offering a standard one-year warranty – a practice mirrored by every other consumer tech firm in the country.

Sony was also criticised because some of those who had suffered console failures had lost the data stored on the machine. To blame Sony for consumer’s inability to back up their data is, frankly, outlandish.

The BBC also had to contend with the embarrassment that four of the eleven machines it repaired in its ‘PlayStation Repair Action Team van’ had broken again in the time between filming and the show going to air.

Let’s not forget, either, the bizarre moment when the show cut to an x-ray shot of the PS3 which allegedly showed ‘trapped gas’ in the circuits which Sony claims is not to blame for the problems. No explanation of this was given.