Sony is facing allegations that a recent Playstation 3 firmware update caused irreversible hardware damage, with costly repairs as the only solution.
John Kennedy, of Florida, is leading the class-action lawsuit. He claims that "thousands" of PS3 owners were left with broken Blu-ray drives after installing a pair of recent firmware updates. Sony wouldn't eat the cost of repairs, demanding the standard $150 fee to fix the problem, Kennedy claims.
Sony's firmware 3.0 update did, in fact, cause problems for a fraction of Playstation 3 owners, myself included. After installing the update, I was unable to play Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for longer than a few minutes without the game freezing completely. Sony eventually acknowledged the problem, and fixed it with a 3.01 firmware update.
That's when the real problems began, according to Kennedy. The Blu-ray drives in some users' PS3 consoles malfunctioned after the second update, refusing to read any kind of optical media, according to the lawsuit (PDF).
Kennedy is throwing several causes of action at Sony, from breach of implied warranty (the logic being that sold a product that was unfit for use) and negligence to unjust enrichment (because Sony sought to collect repair fees) and "trespass to chattels," meaning that Sony intentionally meddled with people's systems, causing them to no longer function.
Sony hasn't commented on the lawsuit, but when users started complaining of malfunctioning Blu-ray drives, Sony told Eurogamer that the firmware wasn't to blame. However, the company didn't elaborate on what might be causing the problem.
I'm kind of expecting this case to be settled, but the underlying issue of faulty firmware updates leaves me bitter. Sony's not the only one to blame, either: A recent firmware update for Nintendo's Wii also caused consoles to break, to the point that Nintendo began offering free repairs. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has experienced similar issues. Sony just made the mistake of refusing repairs.
Faulty firmware updates are the consequence for consoles that can evolve and improve over the years, but they also make me nostalgic for a time when you only had to blow into the cartridge to set things right.
