14 DAY TRIAL // When there's console talk going on, someone is bound to bring up the subject of the Red Ring'o'Death syndrome of the Xbox 360. There's been a lot of talk about how Microsoft almost never delivers actual new consoles and instead patches old ones up. And it's fairly known that high hardware failure rates are one of the main issues users have with the Microsoft game console.
But Microsoft is not alone in not addressing quickly and professionally all the problems that are related to its consoles. Rumors have been cropping up recently, especially after the latest firmware upgrade, that the PlayStation 3 console from Sony is beginning to develop a hardware failure syndrome. The error code associated with it is 80010514. But Sony doesn't yet acknowledge the existence of this particular error.
The people at Game Revolver managed to reproduce the error on their game console. They seem to believe that the error code means one of two things, either a faulty sector on the internal hard drive or a faulty installation of software/firmware. Apparently, a hard drive issue might be generating the second possible explanation, if a firmware is attempted and the bad sector gets written over.
The fact that the console affected by the error could still play DVD and Blu-ray movies without problems gives even more truth to the theory that it can all be a symptom of a defective firmware update generated by way of a faulty internal drive in the PS3.
The usual steps of dusting off your console and preventing any possible overheating apply, along with having a stable connection when attempting the firmware update.
What's strange is that Sony technical staff doesn't seem to be aware of any error code 80010514. A Sony spokesman told Eurogamer: "I've spoken to our Customer Services department and they aren't aware of this issue with the PS3." Could it be simply a communication issue or a genuine refusal to acknowledge an existing PlayStation 3 problem?