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Sony's new PlayStation 4: Early faults ENRAGE some buyers

Players report early-gen glitches, Sony thrusts new firmware download

Some of the thousands of early adopters who shelled out for Sony's PlayStation 4 console, launched today in the US, have already reported mysterious system failures.

The entertainment giant's support forums are littered with threads, some more than a dozen pages long, devoted to problems users are experiencing with their new powerful consoles.

Gamers have complained of hardware glitches that caused systems to reset and display a blinking blue light. Additionally players have reported issues with the console's physical HDMI connection. Suggested workarounds in the forums and elsewhere online have included fiddling with the HDMI port to remove any bits of metal obstructing the cable plug, and forcing a reformat of the PS4's hard drive by removing and reinserting the drive.

Sony had not responded to The Reg's request for comment on the failure reports.

For those customers lucky enough to have received a working console, Sony has release an early 325MB firmware update for the system. Version 1.50 of the software enables access to the online PlayStation Network, voice commands and Blu-ray playback.

Early hardware failures in consoles are nothing new as users who line up to be the first to own the systems are often also left to sort out first-generation design and manufacturing flaws.

When Microsoft released its Xbox 360 console, an infamous hardware condition branded the 'Red Ring of Death' sparked outcry and forced the company to extend warranties and cover repairs on broken systems. ®

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