A picture has come out of an event in Spain alleging of a Playstation 4 unit overheating, even displaying a red line across the front. Of course, the thin red line is already being dubbed the red line of death, but this may not be wholly accurate.
Bear in mind that Sony has yet to confirm or comment on this situation, but there have been prior cases where Playstation 4 demo units were not responsive. Yoshida famously intervened, explaining that these were cases where there was wireless interference, or problems with the game.
Spanish forum elotrolado user Homer J. Simpson had some interesting comments about what he saw when it happened. He got to try out Assassin’s Creed 4 and Knack, and was particularly impressed with the latter.
The system is practically quiet. You can hear the fan if you come up on it very closely, but not from a playing distance. When the system appeared to overheat, it was very warm on top, but not the way current gen consoles get hot.
At this point, a red light came up where the blue LED usually appears, and a message came onscreen saying that the console had a high temperature. At this point, translation got very vague, but after two seconds the on-screen message disappeared and the system was back to normal.
At the very least, it appears the red light comes up as a warning if there are any malfunctions with the Playstation 4, and is not necessarily a sign the system has completely broken down. And, of course, we are talking about demo units here which may not reflect the quality of the final system.
Still, this piece of news does not raise hopes that launch units of the Playstation 4 will be 100 % reliable, or last this upcoming console generation. Does this make you think twice about your preorder?
UPDATE: gamrConnect forum user Chevinator123 has shared a better translation of the text about the PS4 overheating that will clear up a lot of questions about what happened that day. I'm sharing it verbatim below:
“it had a red light (where the typical blue LED light) and had a message on the screen saying that the console had a very high temperature. The security case was opened and in two seconds the error message was removed and the light had returned to its normal color. “
For the record, I've also been looking around for a detailed explanation from Sony about what exactly happened, and will post a follow up on this when I do. This hopefully assuages the worst fears about the system's stability, but given that the overheating did happen, concerns still remain that the system might not be ready for prime time.
Source: VideoGameScene
