Even if the price of standalone Blu Ray players has dropped they dont have to work anywhere near as hard as the PS3 does because they dont have to read games which makes them, ok not bullet proof, but far more reliable.
Sorry but posting this and then this.......
Although I appreciate what your saying Scaff I dont agree with some points. Firstly reported failure rates are never a good indication or real failure rates as some people dont fix them or take them back to Sony. Also the PS3 was supposed to have a lower failure rate than 3%.
......has just made me chuckle quite a bit.
So reported failure rates which come from manufacturers, independent warranty providers and retailers are not a good indication of real failure rates; however your completely anecdotal statement on stand-alone players is?
I have never had anything electronic fail on me ever. Even complicated things. Despite there being an allowance for failure it should not occur in any device if it has had minium use. It is also a false representation of what a product is supposed to be capable of. In the case of the PS3 is should be able to be used for all types of media, be on 24h's a day and last 10 years.
I've worked in electronic retail (hi-fi, AV and Photographic) and know full well how often electronic equipment can fail, that you personally have never had an item fail means nothing at all.
I've never had a single problem with a new car (and during the years I worked for Renault I had over twenty), but would not attempt to use that as proof that Renault's products are 100% reliable and never fail.
To believe that a device should never fail at all (which is exactly what you have just claimed) quite frankly shocks me, that is a totally unrealistic view to hold. Let me ask, are you 100% infallible in everything you do?
You would also expect that any of these 'faulty %' consoles would be weeded out in the first years warranty. Units failing in considerable numbers after that period prove there is something wrong with the design. I am suprised with this generations consoles that the quality has been so poor Wii not included because thats older technology.
Yes failure rates will generally be higher in the first year of a products life (and even greater in the first few months), which is why Q&A sample rates and failed unit removal from production lines are much more intensive at the start of a products life. Its not uncommon for the first production batch of an electronic device to undergo 100% QA (so every machine is checked and tested), however as full production is ramped up that becomes impossible to do, however refinements in the production process normally balance these two factors out.
You are also, once again, forgetting that even if failure rates drop as time goes on, if you are selling more units the perceived problem will increase.
An example.
In the first year you produce 1 million units of item X, and has a lifetime failure rate of 5%, that's 50,000 units that fail.
However by year three you are now producing 10 million units a year and have managed to get your lifetime failure rate down to 2.5%, that's 250,000.
So despite halving the failure rate of product X, you now have five times the number of units that will fail hitting the market in year three than you did in year one. That's five times the number of people potentially screaming blue murder on the web from year three.
Now would you rather buy product X in year one or three? In year three product X is far less likely to fail than it is in year one, yet up to five times the number of people are screaming that its not working (most of them on the web).
Simply put the number of people moaning about a product needs to be taken into account with a lot more information, and that must always include the failure rates and units sold.
Even if product X had got its failure rate to 1% in the third year, it would still have twice the number of failed units compared to the first year.
This PS3 problem is a growing issue. One which might be deep seated in the design of the console which is why there have been so many revisions to the hardware since it has been released.
Robin.
You are aware that many reasons can exist as to why hardware gets revised, one of the most common is that of cost reduction.
I'm not saying that reliability is not a factor involved in this, of course one of the aims over time is to improve a design in all ways. That however reduces the lifetime failure rate of the product, not increases it.
What we are seeing here is quite normal for electronic hardware, and taking anecdotal evidence off the web of people who simply post that they have had a machine fail is about as far from a reliable source as you can get.
Which is exactly why your comment about manufacturer/independent failure rate figures makes me chuckle. No they are not going to 100% accurate, but they are still far, far more accurate and reliable that using the 'a bloke on a web-site posted' method you are using.
Here is one of many example you can get for current gen failure rates.....
http://www.gamegrep.com/news/7439-new_reports_on_the_3_console_failure_rates/
.....and simply googling Console failure rates will get you many more. Almost all of which give the same basic figures. 360 at around 16%, PS3 and Wii at around 3%, these are figures from returned units from retail chains and are about as accurate as you are going to get.
Your entire argument is based around the number of people who have posted comments on the web, and I've already shown just how misleading that can be.
Regards
Scaff