The Day His Consoles Died.

Submitted by James Munn on August 20, 2007 – 11:28 pm6 Comments

I had a long and sad conversation with my friend Twitch earlier this evening. He was just out of town and came home to a gaming nightmare. His wife went to bed early (not the nightmare), he grabbed a cool brew (definitely not a nightmare) and fired up his PS3 and Wii on his monstrous 55″ Sony HDTV (nightmare begins).

On his PS3′s XMB, the text is blurred and slanted. He doesn’t know how or why, but after he boots up his system the text quickly flips upward. The videos of the deforming text is inside, so you can grimace along with me. Enough of a nightmare for you? Oh no…there’s more…

It turns out his Wii needs to go back to Nintendo for a second time *GASP*. It seems he’s got a defective system that again has NES-type artifacts speckling his screen. (Yes, I have a video courtesy of Twitch inside as well.) Nintendo refuses to give him a new system and if he buys a new one, all of his downloaded content will be gone. I’d consider this to be the worse than his PS3 problem, but I’ll let you decide.

Videos and more information inside, if you’re the type of person to stop and watch a car wreck. You sick son of a….

The PS3 error is above, shown as it first pops up during the system launch. We’ve tried swapping HDMI cables and also using basic A/V cables, but nothing works. He’s at the point now where he’s copying all his saves onto a memory stick and formatting the system. Has anyone run into this? The PS3 Forums aren’t any help. If you have any input, or if you’d like to offer condolences, do so in the comments section below.

As for his Wii troubles, the video for that is below. This is definitely worse because he sees this in his games as well as the Wii interface. I can only imagine how annoying this is for him. Unfortunately, this the second time he’s had this problem and as I said, Nintendo won’t replace the hardware. He’s very distraught that with all the money Nintendo is swimming in right now, they can’t pat a loyal fanboy on the back and do him a solid.

It’s a little hard to see here but this is apparently a very good day for the artifacts. It gets much, much worse.

Good luck buddy.

http://www.aeropause.com Stephen

I’ve heard mention of some Wiis with bad video boards here and there, but they were all that way when new. There’s even mention of it on the support site, something along the lines of “click here if you’re having a video problem.” My understanding was this wasn’t an issue that happened to the systems, it was an issue that was there when the system was first turned on, so a defect, get me?

This is fascinating stuff, especially that both systems went at the same time. I know you tried swapping cables. Have you tried swapping TV sets?
Sifer2400

Wow that sux bad, wish i could offer some advise but i have neither of these systems. Also i figured Nintendo would easily replace his console how did his first one break, isn’t he in the one yr warranty? has he called sony to see if there willing to replace his console. Dam you would think that if you had 2 and one broke you could just rely on the other one, geez.
http://www.farbot.com/ Paul Munn

That’s horrible! I hope the reformat works on the PS3, but both systems doing that at once seems more than a little fishy. I’d second Stephen’s idea about the TV.

Does he have a PSP? Does the PS3 artifacting show up on the PSP in Remote Play mode?
http://www.routermall.com used cisco

This sucks hard. These being both very reliable hardware, and him losing 2 wiis to the same problem, I would be trying to figure out what the environmental variable is here. To lose 2 Wiis with the exact same problem as well as having video difficulties with the PS3, something is doing this to those consoles in his environment. If its not heat, its radiation or microwaves or his TV or something. This is too much to be coincidence. Something weird is happening to his machines.
Sifer2400

Not to make light of the situation but to cheer things up a bit. I propose its one of the 3 lol
A. you have a ghost in the house the messes poltergeist lol call your local exorcist
B. you Tv is some how fucking up your consoles u better hope not
C. your consoles hate each other and that hate manifested into some weird frequency vibe which destroyed them both i say keep them in separate rooms lolll
Twitch366

The issue with the 2 Wii’s is actually the same incidence. The system looked in the clear of the visual cancer, but it appears it was just in remission. The bug has come back and with force. I will have to give you a better video when I remember.

The PS3 actually worked out to be a sweet deal. So the problem was apparently gone after reformatting, but that only lasted 4 minutes. I started a full format and went to bed. When I woke up and started the system the text was already bad again (drats right).

Actually I got the PRP when I bought the system. Went back to BBY and because the PRP is money value for money value, picked up the 80GB for nothing, which comes with Motorstorm (which I didn’t have), and a 5 Blu-Ray movie rebate!!! Pretty sweet turn around on the story. It makes sending my Wii back out for service bearable.

PS. I will look into the Poltergeist and seperating the feuding systems when it returns.