Scattered reports of faulty HDMI ports and/or hard drives on pre-launch PlayStation 4 units have kicked off an “investigation” by Sony on the eve of the next-gen console’s release.
Currently there appear to be a total of ten cases of broken PlayStation 4 consoles, two of which are review units belonging to IGN and Kotaku. The end result from all of the reports is that the broken systems experienced a permanent failure to transmit signals from their HDMI port to the users’ TV, at which point Sony requested the units to be sent back to the company. Exactly how the consoles failed seems to fall into two camps.
In most of the reports — including Kotaku’s review console — the broken PlayStation 4 was a retail unit that was defective out of the box. In other cases — like those reported by IGN and a Twitter user — the PS4 worked perfectly at first, but was hit with an apparent HDMI failure during or after an attempted download. This has led to some speculation that certain systems might also be experiencing issues related to faulty hard drives.
The exact cause of the defective PlayStation 4 consoles is not know, but Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida has assured fans that they are “investigating” the reports and believe they are “isolated incidents.”
Be assured we are investigating reported PS4 issues. The number is very small compared to shipped, we believe they are isolated incidents.
— Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp) November 14, 2013
Defects in hardware at launch are (sadly) not a new issue in the video game industry, so the fact that there are some broken PlayStation 4 consoles is not all that surprising. For now, the reports seem to indicate that the problem is not widespread, but that could change as more people get their hands on the next-gen console over the next couple of days.
We will keep an eye on the situation and update this post with any new information that comes in.
