Digital Foundry tech analysis channel at Eurogamer

[obonicus]

Not when you have no hard facts of your own and are simply arguing that a small, small figure buried in the middle of the article - again, not on the title, not even the main point of the article - is evidence the piece is sensationalist.

Except I didn't do that. I gave you more evidence of questionable wording, which you happen to disagree with and have since ignored. More seriously, if you think I'm breaking forum rules then I should be reprimanded.

Yes, but I still fail to see the relevance to GM's post.

'the issue of PlayStation 3 reliability is being brought into question'. Again, this is unsourced. Who's bringing it into question? This is a clear example of weasel wording. Saying 'oh, by the people who take it to the shop' is exactly the sort of reasoning weasel-wording inspires, which is even more upsetting. In no place did it say that people bringing it into the shop are questioning PS3 reliability!

As you no doubt know anecdonal evidence rarely proves anything. Console crusaders may grab onto that figure and run with it but I believe what you're arguing (removal of that anecdotal number) is ultimately pointless itself because console crusaders would pick up another sentence of the article instead. For me: was the figure clearly qualified as anecdotal? Yes. Was there analysis of that figure pro/con? Yes. If other people will take it as a de facto ratio, that's just normal console fandom.

Fine, let console crusaders do whatever they do. I'll pick on the stuff I think is blatantly bad and unnecessary.

The point GM was making, and that I'm arguing, is not that stuff breaks down. It's that it breaks down inside a time frame a reasonable person wouldn't expect it to.

I'm even willing to believe that was the point of the article. I don't think that's what the article is saying. It's impossible to have an argument on this sort of thing because just as 'console warriors' are known for knee-jerk reactions, the 'keepers of the truth' are just as eager to knee-jerk any negative reaction as simply a fanboy response (something I know I'm guilty of). Hell, it's the first thing grandmaster did when he posted after liolio's original post!

An important part of the article is to paint the PS3 and the 360's problem with the same brush, because, indeed, both suffer from the same problems. The problem is that too broad strokes were used -- by mentioning them so often in the same breath the subtext is, indeed, that these problems are closer than is believed by common knowledge. And this may even be true -- but there's not a single fact within the article to support it. The calls to actual reported numbers actually cast aspersions on them in, again, a very 6-o-clock news sort of way. That's not how you deal with facts.

Again, I think you're reading too much into that figure. GM was at a repair shop, he talked to the employee, there were xboxes there for repair, there were PS3s there for repair. GM asked the obvious question, the guy answered and GM put it into context. Maybe someone on the intertubes will go on a different repair shop and ask and we get a different figure and it's equally valid.

I don't understand this defense. Are these words put there by accident? Who chose to put the figure there? Should we selectively ignore parts of the article or should we take it as written?

The article says that the '60/40 split (...) does prove pretty conclusively that both consoles are having exactly the same issues'. Really, now. How does it do that? What does 60/40 prove? I'm clearly not the only one reading something into the 60/40 figure, the author himself does too.

What I'm saying is that, historically for consumer electronics, things breaking down this fast is news. More than news, it should be broad consumer knowledge to put pressure on console makers, industry and government that, for instance what Silent_Buddha mentioned, measures to reduce pollution may in fact increase it. Then you can also argue that the current situation provides jobs in the refurb industry and what not. Or we could argue design deadlines, lack of testing or even engineering competence. But we're not having those important discussions, we're arguing a fraction.

Like I said, the PS3 not being a tank is news, indeed. That electronics break down isn't. And yeah, we're not having that discussion. I held my opinion on the article for several days because I thought something worthwhile could emerge, but mostly we started to see people rushing to defend both the PS3 or the article (and occasionally even the 360). So let's not pretend that I'm holding up more meaningful discussion -- my issue has always been with games journalism and I still think that digital foundry is the most worthwhile content source on the web exactly for its objectivity (with some caveats). GM set a high bar for himself.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Sony does not need to do a soft recall like MS did, that was pure PR to the save brand. It's not even a real three year warranty, years 2 & 3 are for specific failures.

With the arcade being so cheap I think most people just buy a new unit and drop the HD in, who would pay to have it repaired? I've never heard of people repairing consoles at 3rd parties, it must be a Euro thing. I wonder how many 360 owners there really are compared to WW sales?

I think software sales should tell is that the user base is very big.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Unfortunately, it appears more and more electronics are trending that direction. And quite a lot of it due to the unneeded use of lead free solder which decreases reliability/lifespan and increases cost. So in the effort to reduce pollutants, govenment agencies have increased pollutants.

The refurbished market appears be growing quite significantly each year. Even some e-tailers focused on refurbished electronics now.

Regards,
SB

I wouldn't blame lead free solder for shitty reliability in itself. It definitely is taking some companies longer than others to get used to, but it shouldn't be a barrier to reliability. The real problem is that companies are not charged a fortune to dispose of unreliable product and waste in foreign countries.

I have a 360, and I like the product. I'm happy with the warranty. That said, it's absolutely ridiculous that such an unreliable and wasteful product ever made it to market.

And the whole cellphone market is a joke.

 

[obonicus]

To restate Richard's point: Are have been proposing that Grandmaster wrote certain things with the specific intent to drive additional traffic.

Of course. That's even trivially true because I expect writers to do that. They don't want to write stuff that no one will see. If he had called it: 'My visit to a videogame repair shop' it wouldn't have drawn as much attention. I'm not even saying that it's wrong. I do think it has to be tempered, and my impression that this wasn't tempered was because of a rush to publish rather than review and edit.

Obviously most here engage in activity that in "professional" channels would be so far out of bounds because they lack all journalistic criteria. As for the article (which I have not even read... haven't even read this entire thread fyi) there are two issues:

Shouldn't you do that first, before commenting?

1. Did the author write statements backup up with facts. The facts may be limited (e.g. MS and Sony are not giving us hard numbers of average and median life span of consoles, % needing repairs, what models needing repair, exact technical issues, etc) but has the author made a conscious effort to gather facts from reputable channels and tempered those in the context of the entire article?

No, because there's very little facts on this issue in general. It's the whole reason of my complaint -- where's the facts? Is this an opinion piece? It's not phrased as op-ed.

2. The second issue is the accusation of motive. An author can make a "journalistic mistake" without having a direct motive to be sensational. On the other hand an author can have a blatant motive and still be accurate.

I've admitted that maybe grandmaster doesn't have an editor and so it all might have been accidental. It's also very common. But it's a journalist's job to draw attention to what you're writing. I think this was irresponsible. Okay, minorly so since this subject is so laughable and minor, but still irresponsible.

Unless the author has stated the latter clearly it should be left alone because EVERY media source can be attributed as such. Now some things are known over time (e.g. La Inq has certain biases based on history; the mainstream press leans left in general; etc) but your connection (advertising and content) as a means to accuse is flawed as it lacks any relevance in the market.

It's not flawed, it's how blogs work. Do you think Kotaku's not sensationalist? That joystiq isn't? That vg247 isn't? That destructoid isn't? It's how they get clicks; Kotaku will outright troll in half its posts because they know that trolls get lots of angry responses, and each one of those is a click in the bank. It's how the whole gawker media empire even works.

Having been accused being an Xbot and receiving stuff from MS (or worse, working for MS) I find insinuations like yours insulting--only because MS has never given me a darned thing!! Ad hominem insults and judgments of motives really aren't necessary.

What? Who's talking to you? I try not to even respond to your posts. I've never called you an x-bot.

 

[DrJay24]

The problem with amateur journalism is the freedom, no editor, no ombudsmen, etc.

GM gets to pick his topics, he gets to choose what to downplay and what to upplay. In his latest article he seems to equivocate the massive 360 failure problems we all know with the much more minor PS3 issues. Just reading the boards response to the article it is plain enough he has done what he set out. The problem IMO is he has no useful new or inside info, he is just writing lots of conjecture along with an interview of some shop owner. Two pages and there is nothing to learn. No legit info from MS or Sony. No real numbers.

Does GM have bias? Of course everyone does. It is not blatent, but it's not hard to detect his fondness for MS and not-so-fondness for Sony.

He invents a FPS analyzer and turns it against nothing but Sony exclusives up until recently.

He writes a Crackdown puff piece when inFamous is released, in it he takes shots ot KZ2 and inFamous.

An article about bullshots spawning from a FM3/GT5 discussion yet it only calls out GTPSP and GT5.. no FM3 mention?

The big news about the slim breaks, he writes a piece nearly equivocating PS3 and 360 reliability and takes cracks at Sony's warranty.

Pattern or coincidence??

If you are going to stick yourself out as a public figure you must expect criticism. Who is going to keep GM honest, EG? No, it's us.

 

[Richard]

'the issue of PlayStation 3 reliability is being brought into question'. Again, this is unsourced. Saying 'oh, by the people who take it to the shop' is exactly the sort of reasoning weasel-wording inspires, which is even more upsetting. In no place did it say that people bringing it into the shop are questioning PS3 reliability!

I took the implied source. It could also mean recent discussions about Sony claiming the failure rate being 0.02%, more recently at 3%, while this survey showing 10.6%? Who do you think he meant?

It's impossible to have an argument on this sort of thing because just as 'console warriors' are known for knee-jerk reactions, the 'keepers of the truth' are just as eager to knee-jerk any negative reaction as simply a fanboy response

Well, if I may, the question was on taking that figure out of its proper context. But I do agree with you that articles should be criticised. I just don't believe semantics or leaving out inflammatory, but contextualised, comments to be a worthwhile discussion. The first is subjective, the latter is ultimately pointless.

An important part of the article is to paint the PS3 and the 360's problem with the same brush, because, indeed, both suffer from the same problems. The problem is that too broad strokes were used -- by mentioning them so often in the same breath the subtext is, indeed, that these problems are closer than is believed by common knowledge. And this may even be true -- but there's not a single fact within the article to support it. The calls to actual reported numbers actually cast aspersions on them in, again, a very 6-o-clock news sort of way. That's not how you deal with facts.

You mentioned the wording previously and now this. What can I say, could the article be better written? I suppose, but personally I don't see anything wrong with it as is. The facts he laid out were the ones he got at a repair shop in Old Blighty, nothing more.

I don't understand this defense. Are these words put there by accident? Who chose to put the figure there? Should we selectively ignore parts of the article or should we take it as written?

I believe we should weigh the different parts of the article differently. Is the figure integral to the main point of the article? If not, why are we banging on it so hard?

The article says that the '60/40 split (...) does prove pretty conclusively that both consoles are having exactly the same issues'. Really, now. How does it do that?

GM is better qualified to answer this one.

Like I said, the PS3 not being a tank is news, indeed. That electronics break down isn't.

MS disagrees listing an average break down figures for CE below 5%. By that recent survey not even the Wii is in the clear. The Wii having a lower break down rate is probably due to the lesser hardware involved - less heat, less strain on the solder. The PS3's lower break rate may be due to better engineering but it's almost not due to better materials as this article shows. I thought that was an interesting part of the article.

So let's not pretend that I'm holding up more meaningful discussion -- my issue has always been with games journalism and I still think that digital foundry is the most worthwhile content source on the web exactly for its objectivity (with some caveats).

You're not holding up the discussion, but we could have moved on from the fraction a while ago.

With the arcade being so cheap I think most people just buy a new unit and drop the HD in, who would pay to have it repaired?

Perhaps that may have played a factor for raising the price of the arcade: MS not recouping those arcade losses in games for new consumers?

 

[JardeL]

Oh I know that, on my first comment about this matter I mentioned people would take it out of context. But I don't agree with watering down articles for fear of fanboi wars - those will happen regardless; it's a losing proposition.

Richard , I'm not gonna bring here responses from GAF or all over the net. I'll only bring this [ I'm not judging SB don't get me wrong. ] ;

I think it's pretty telling that Sony is still unwilling to extend their's past 1 year despite consoles failing.

Prolly SB thinks Sony should extend their warranty , but why ? Because the article shows the X360's failure rate as reasonable thanks to anecdotal evidence [ and generalization which you'll see below] .

If you're talking about faulty consoles at a repair shop this can't be the conclusion ;

Slowly but surely, just like its competitor, the issue of PlayStation 3 reliability is being brought into question.

Don't you think this is generalization ?

And if you think posting articles , based on anecdotal evidence and generalizing it , is the real journalism then I'll send you lots of statistics regarding X360's & PS3's failure rates from my town's repair shops , please post them on front page as an article.

 

[Richard]

The real problem is that companies are not charged a fortune to dispose of unreliable product and waste in foreign countries.

That could be a problem but I don't know if that much waste is generated by bricked XBOXes or PSs for that matter. Everything outside of the EMI shield is refurbable (yes, I wrote that , the heatsink and fans also. That leaves the PCB and chipsets which - I believe - recycle quite well. Of course, that assumes every broken console goes back to MS/Sony which I severely doubt. Nonetheless, over here we have specific laws and programmes for CE disposal so it's not entirely nightmarish.

 

[Squilliam]

message too short?

Does GM have bias? Of course everyone does. It is not blatent, but it's not hard to detect his fondness for MS and not-so-fondness for Sony.

Its funny, I always interpretted him as being unbiased or slightly favouring the PS3.

He invents a FPS analyzer and turns it against nothing but Sony exclusives up until recently.

So he only analyses PS3 games. I believe its because he sees PS3 games as interesting enough to analyse and hes obviously in Sony's pocket. It wasn't up until recently that he realised that he needed to appear more balanced.

He writes a Crackdown puff piece when inFamous is released, in it he takes shots ot KZ2 and inFamous.

His Killzone 2 piece was nothing but praise. It galled me to see him play down the framerate drops and other visual inconsistancies.

An article about bullshots spawning from a FM3/GT5 discussion yet it only calls out GTPSP and GT5.. no FM3 mention?

He called the cars in Forza 3 'plastic looking' IIRC and he said that GT5 looked more real/natural. Its obvious that someone who favours the PS3 so much would see things that way with a game which dares compete with a top flight exclusive on the PS3.

The big news about the slim breaks, he writes a piece nearly equivocating PS3 and 360 reliability and takes cracks at Sony's warranty.

No, he has the gall to imply that the Xbox 360 failure rate might be higher due to the longer warranty. How does he not know that they aren't getting consoles needing official repairs? Its obvious that his PS3 leanings are shining through.

Pattern or coincidence??

If you are going to stick yourself out as a public figure you must expect criticism. Who is going to keep GM honest, EG? No, it's us.

Bias is often relative... and no I don't hold those opinions, but I could percieve the same piece in a different way and I have to you.

 

[liolio]

Grandmaster, have you done or have you been thinking about a Ghostbusters tech analysis... not a PS3/Xbox 360 comparison... just about analyzing the effects the engine shows (I think Terminal Reality also tried to make a bit of a technical demo with the game [I like the game btw]) which are not ruined IMHO even on the PS3 version.

Steep parallax mapping (used quite extensively in some areas), normal mapping and anisotropic filtering (Central Park's cemetery under the rain... at the fountain...), what seem to be dynamic normal maps (Uncharted 1 like) used for clothes, various particle and water effects, ... the engine is not bad...

I'll save you some time he didn't
But there are more an more content that is not Vs on the digital foundry but those analysis are less prone to catch attention. As you're a dev I understand your point, it can feel a bit unfair to the job the devs. But overall it's almost the only kind of "bench" we have. It's part of the market now you know your product will get scrutinized and I don't complain about that as a costumer, especially if I were a Sony costumer. In the end Quartz51, Granmaster job while it put a dent in some kinf of PR have made public aware of some lacking. The thing has gone big and things has get better. In the end ghostbuster even enjoyed a patch and it sold pretty well anyway.

Well overall I feel a lot of "shoot the messenger" in a lot of post on the internet (not only here). How average gamers, fanboys and industry react to his work is not Granmaster problem as long as he feels like he does his job consciously (which I believe he does). For his last article, I don't see any problem at the end of the article I did feel like the RroD was minimized neither as the ps3 is as bad as the 360 in regard to reliability. Both system may not aged well from what I read here and there about PC GPU reliability, it's not a big surprise either.

 

[Richard]

Prolly SB thinks Sony should extend their warranty , but why ? Because the article shows the X360's failure rate as reasonable thanks to anecdotal evidence [ and generalization which you'll see below] .

This might seem a minor thing but the article actually doesn't support failure rates, only console return ratios (at a particular store) - perhaps this is the problem you're having with that figure? The repair guy is not saying the failure rate of the PS3 is 40%, he said usually there's 4 PS3s in for repair for each 6 xboxes. Again, shorter warranty, etc. can account for that. You can extrapolate from those and UK's (or Essex's) console sales and get a failure rate but that's useless because it's based on one store's data.

So I can't answer for SB, what I can say is that if that recent survey (i liked to in my post above) is mildly correct and if GM's report that both consoles suffer from the exact same problem - which is delayed, this is important; then I can see why SB asks for extended warranty. I don't think he means 3 year 1.1Billion dollar, so called, "soft-recall" warranty though.

And if you think posting articles , based on anecdotal evidence and generalizing it , is the real journalism then I'll send you lots of statistics regarding X360's & PS3's failure rates from my town's repair shops , please post them on front page as an article.

Actually, and I'm not joking, that would be an excellent article itself. If you canvas enough repair shops it ceases to be anecdotal evidence, though you still can't argue failure rates, only console ratios.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Both 360 and PS3 have issues with BGA parts that need to be reflowed. If you don't believe that, you're absolutely crazy. The failure rate is now estimated around 50% lifetime for the 360, or at least MS didn't dispute the number, and we don't know what the rate is for the PS3, other than it is significantly lower than the 360.

Grandmaster was pointing out that the PS3 and 360 are both suffering some fallout because of the same issue, which is an interesting point of note to people who did not know why their 360s and PS3s were breaking, or who did not know what a BGA or reflow was. I think it was also good of him to point out that the homebrew fixes were bad news, because there are quite a few people watching that crap on youtube and trying it out. Obviously the 360 is suffering from the problem far worse, but I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that the electronics industry, in general, can be susceptible to the same problems.

DrJay24, if you honestly believe Grandmaster is biased against the PS3, you've been sipping the Sony koolaid way too much.

 

[DrJay24]

If you canvas enough repair shops it ceases to be anecdotal evidence, though you still can't argue failure rates, only console ratios.

There are many reasons one console shows up at a repair shop more than another, if the author did not understand them well it could easily mislead the author and the readers.

 

[Richard]

Correct DrJay24.

Anyway, the latest article on DF is about Wolfenstein. grandmaster, a small correction, DOOM 3 was released on Aug 2004, not 2005 as stated. Also, the renderer suffered alot of changes, it's now D3D-based, it has soft-stencils, etc. Btw, to that commenter on EG saying "DOOM 3 barely ran 35fps at high detail 800x600 on that "state-of-the-art" Radeon 9800Pro back in 2004." maybe you can show him this:

 

[mrcorbo]

Both 360 and PS3 have issues with BGA parts that need to be reflowed. If you don't believe that, you're absolutely crazy. The failure rate is now estimated around 50% lifetime for the 360, or at least MS didn't dispute the number, and we don't know what the rate is for the PS3, other than it is significantly lower than the 360.

Grandmaster was pointing out that the PS3 and 360 are both suffering some fallout because of the same issue, which is an interesting point of note to people who did not know why their 360s and PS3s were breaking, or who did not know what a BGA or reflow was. I think it was also good of him to point out that the homebrew fixes were bad news, because there are quite a few people watching that crap on youtube and trying it out. Obviously the 360 is suffering from the problem far worse, but I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that the electronics industry, in general, can be susceptible to the same problems.

Pretty much.

Communication is a cooperative process. While it is the responsibility of the communicator to properly format the ideas being presented in a way that can be easily understood, it is equally the responsibility of the person being communicated to to make a reasonable effort to properly understand the ideas being presented.

In the case of this article, it's a shame that people have chosen to interpret the article as they have since I believe Grandmaster went to great lengths to make sure that he provided the proper context for all the data presented.

I also think some got so fixated on the 60/40 ratio that they assumed it was a a much more important factor in some of the statements in the article than it actually was. For example, the specific quote was brought up by Keyn:

Slowly but surely, just like its competitor, the issue of PlayStation 3 reliability is being brought into question.

Take that statement in isolation, without any of the facts of the article and it is actually true. Think about it. We went from hearing next to no reports of issues with PS3s to the YLOD being a fairly well-known phenomenon. It will never even come close to the level of the RROD, but the issue has clearly gained in prominence over time.

The information in the article itself just reinforces that the root causes for the failures is the same and that therefore the potential is there for both consoles to fail. Nowhere does it claim that there's a reason to believe that the PS3 is as likely to fail as the 360.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This might seem a minor thing but the article actually doesn't support failure rates, only console return ratios (at a particular store) - perhaps this is the problem you're having with that figure? The repair guy is not saying the failure rate of the PS3 is 40%, he said usually there's 4 PS3s in for repair for each 6 xboxes. Again, shorter warranty, etc. can account for that. You can extrapolate from those and UK's (or Essex's) console sales and get a failure rate but that's useless because it's based on one store's data.

So I can't answer for SB, what I can say is that if that recent survey (i liked to in my post above) is mildly correct and if GM's report that both consoles suffer from the exact same problem - which is delayed, this is important; then I can see why SB asks for extended warranty. I don't think he means 3 year 1.1Billion dollar, so called, "soft-recall" warranty though.

Thank you, the only implication in me saying that is that Sony's customer's would be better served if their investment were also protected over a long term given that this issue primarily appears after long useage.

MS has taken that track, whether force to or voluntarily doesn't matter. But at least its customer's aren't forced to bear the cost themselves in the case of the solder drying and thus the GPU losing contact with all pins. 3 years seems a quite reasonable length of time.

Sony, considering its reputation for not breaking down as much should have no problems doing this. If the extent of failure's is as low as they claim (and as posted previously there are no recent surveys that bear that out) then it should be no significant financial burden. All the while those few customers who's PS3 does fail will at least not have to pay the out of warranty repair fees. And even if it's the case that independant surveys are correct and failure is possibly north of 10% that's still a far lower cost than MS is paying.

In the end, it just gives the impression that while MS "screwed the pooch" so to say with the hardware defects of the console at launch, they have been far more interested in taking care of their customers than Sony.

PS - something I found interesting is that there are shops in the US contracted by MS directly for X360 repairs. One of the largest is down in Texas. They do repairs both for MS and consumers directly. And also purchase failed consoles to refurbish and resell. So it appears that what Grandmaster reported isn't all that uncommon. And additionally MS doesn't do the repairs themselves but outsources it to companies like the one GM visited.

Regards,
SB

 

[2real4tv]

Great article but all you have to do is talk to all your xbox friends to find out how much of a problem it is. Mine broke, I have personal friends who's broke multiple times. One just sold his and bought a slim recently because he is tired of it and wanted to take a hammer to it. My son is a 360 fan but is growing tired of it because after buying a brand new system it is now destroying my games with circular scratches and now I have to install the games to HD to get some to work, I have a 20gig by the way.

Iam on the fence now because my XBL is up for renewal today(I think) or sometime this month and I don't know if it is worth renewing.

 

[Arwin]

Won't many if those changes apply to the fat PS3 too once 3.0 is installed?

Now that I've installed it, it looks like only the first thing in my list is available to non-Slims, the "being able to output sound to multiple outputs at the same time" - I verified that this morning. The rest remains Slim specific as far as I can see.

What would be interesting is to see what the power consumption idling in the XMB is post Firmware 3.0 - the (just slightly) louder fan in my old PS3 seems to suggest the new firmware UI uses more power, but as we say in Dutch "meten is weten" (measuring is knowing)

 

[joker454]

What would be interesting is to see what the power consumption idling in the XMB is post Firmware 3.0 - the (just slightly) louder fan in my old PS3 seems to suggest the new firmware UI uses more power, but as we say in Dutch "meten is weten" (measuring is knowing)

On the Ps3 slim with 3.0 firmware, the wattage seems to vary based on where you are in XMB. For example in the game tab:

On Trophy Collection: 83 watts
On Playstation store: 87 watts

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Great article but all you have to do is talk to all your xbox friends to find out how much of a problem it is. Mine broke, I have personal friends who's broke multiple times. One just sold his and bought a slim recently because he is tired of it and wanted to take a hammer to it. My son is a 360 fan but is growing tired of it because after buying a brand new system it is now destroying my games with circular scratches and now I have to install the games to HD to get some to work, I have a 20gig by the way.

Iam on the fence now because my XBL is up for renewal today(I think) or sometime this month and I don't know if it is worth renewing.

In that case X360 has a 0% failure rate. As among my circle of friends (about 10 of whom own a X360) there has been 0 failures. But I'd hardly use that to then claim that X360 has no failures.

Regards,
SB