[quote name='SaraAB']Regardless of what happens I am not paying $300-600 for the latest hardware only to have it break in a couple years especially when consoles only have one year warranties. IMO if you keep your console in a smoke-free, pet free, and child free, clean, environment with enough space around for air ventilation and can prove it the company that makes your console should warranty it for the life of the system. Even if the console isn't sitting in the ideal conditions I still think the company that makes the console should warranty it, as long as you don't do something stupid to it like spill water on it or if your kid shoves lego's into the disc slot... so that you don't have to pay twice or even 3 times for the same product, especially when these products cost large amounts of money. Every last gen system had problems, the Wii had the GPU and artifacting problem, the PS3 has YLOD and the XBox 360 has RROD. The people that paid $400-600 for a console last gen are almost all screwed since they have either had to have their hardware repaired or purchased a new system. There is almost no perfectly working launch hardware left, if there is there is very little launch hardware from last gen that is working without repair or intervention. This is unacceptable to me, especially when paying so much money for a product.
My consoles are sitting in a well ventilated, open air entertainment center, smoke free, child free, and pet free home. I have central air so the consoles aren't running in a room that is any hotter than 75 degrees, and if so are run for only a couple hours at a time. The consoles aren't touched by anyone other than myself, and I am not stupid, and I am careful. There is no reason why I should have consoles breaking on me. Heck I don't even touch my consoles, only to put a disc in, I use the controller exclusively to turn the Xbox 360 on and to open the disc slot. Xbox 360 slim still broke on me... wireless adapter failed... there is simply no way this possibly could have been my fault, thankfully Microsoft replaced with an identical console.[/quote]
Exactly. While my consoles aren't kept in the most ideal conditions, for what you pay for them they should at least be warrantied for three years from the date of manufacture. As long as you haven't tried breaking the seal and tampering with the internal components on your own, you should be able to get warranty service with no problem. But even if you do need warranty service, it's a hassle if you're trying to claim that service from Sony. You need to have a receipt(or a copy of it) showing the date purchased and the serial # on the receipt or else you're SOL.
I bought an E74 error 360 from a local shop that still had the warranty seal intact under the faceplate for $10. All MS required from me when I registered it for service was the serial # from the console and my address for them to ship out the box to send it into them with. That's it. I've even heard that Nintendo is decent on doing repairs outside of the warranty(broken/cracked hinges on the Nintendo DS).
I mean, I can understand why Sony requires what they do, since they don't want to end up with tons of people like me doing like I did with the 360 I mentioned above. But if a console is still within the warranty period and hasn't been opened, some leeway should be given.
Also post launch drought, happens every time, its real fun to spend again $300-600 on a console then have nothing to play for 6months or more while they make games for it. Yes I feel entitled, but assuming I have bought it, I have paid launch price for the console therefore that allows me to feel entitled since I have just spend a large amount of money on a product. If a company cannot produce a steady stream of games so I can, you know, use my shiny new toy for what it was designed for, then I don't want to buy it.
Just like in prior gens, I waited this gen to see which console would have the most exclusive titles I'd want to play. That ended up being the PS3 for me. Moreover, after seeing all of the hardware issues people were having with the 360 I could not justify paying a lot for a console if it was going to end up breaking with just normal use.