New PS Vita Owners Report Instances of Freezing

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joytech22

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How can there be so many issues with firmware updates?
I mean.. They are a gigantic company with lots of $$$, they should have around 100 of these for internal testing BEFORE releasing a update.

Remember how Microsoft did their testing for WP7? They had an entire lab with hundreds of WP7 devices for testing.

Then again the world is infinitely variable, some things you just can't avoid the first time around.
 

dalethepcman

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At $320 and $380 its going to be a tough sell. Because of the high starting entry price the user base will be small, because the user base is small, the developers won't make games for it (square even jumped ship). IMO this is the biggest reason the PS3 took years to become viable against the xbox 360, although it was the better platform with better hardware.

At this point, it seems that Sony like's shocking the world with its extreme prices ($600-$800 PS3 anyone?) The sad thing is if they added the ability to place and receive calls from the 3G model, this device would sell like hot cakes even if they upped the price to $700.
 

tomfreak

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as always new stuff always have issue, Why people go and line up over night just to get a buggy product? Cant they just wait another 3-6 months?
 

jrharbort

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[citation][nom]dalethepcman[/nom]At $320 and $380 its going to be a tough sell.[/citation]
That's the price after conversion of course. The price will more likely be around $300 and $350 in the U.S.

The price may seem unjustified, but it's a bargain considering the hardware it's packing. I wouldn't be surprised if they're taking a loss on these like they were on the PS3. Plus there is no comparison to the gaming experience when it comes to having actual buttons and analog controls. Cell phones and touch based media players just don't compare.
 

ianpm

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[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]How can there be so many issues with firmware updates?I mean.. They are a gigantic company with lots of $$$, they should have around 100 of these for internal testing BEFORE releasing a update.Remember how Microsoft did their testing for WP7? They had an entire lab with hundreds of WP7 devices for testing.Then again the world is infinitely variable, some things you just can't avoid the first time around.[/citation]

Just like Microsoft did a fantastic job of internal testing before the 360 launch....oh wait it just so happened to have a 50 percent failure rate.
 

eddieroolz

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I think it's important for people to realize that early batches, especially the first ones are always prone to issues regardless of company. Even Apple has had various glitches with hardware and software, and they usually have a stellar record.
 

thillntn

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It's $ony.you will buy it and like it(sarcasm). If you modify it and make your own cfw they will sue you.IMHO, Avoid all the drama and wait for a competitor to make something.
 

zybch

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[citation][nom]ianpm[/nom]Just like Microsoft did a fantastic job of internal testing before the 360 launch....oh wait it just so happened to have a 50 percent failure rate.[/citation]
A hardware issue that only becomes apparent after over a year of use is not something that is going to appear in a 6 month testing environment. However MS should have known enough not to pull an 'apple' and make the function fit in with the form factor.
Pretty much all of apple's product problems can be explained by them emphasizing the form over the function of the device.
 

Pinhedd

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[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]How can there be so many issues with firmware updates?I mean.. They are a gigantic company with lots of $$$, they should have around 100 of these for internal testing BEFORE releasing a update.Remember how Microsoft did their testing for WP7? They had an entire lab with hundreds of WP7 devices for testing.Then again the world is infinitely variable, some things you just can't avoid the first time around.[/citation]

One would think that performing a software update to a brand new device is a rather simple task and that a quick test should have caught it but I will tell you why this is not always the case. The people who test the effectiveness of such updates are often the same ones who design them (as opposed to game designers who have games tested by unrelated game testers) and as a result, most developers use the same habbits repeatedly. It's entirely possible that an update installs and performs just fine when performed by that developer due to his or her particular testing methodology but a new user may use some particular edge case which wasn't properly accounted for. Normally one would test every possible input vector, especially for something as important as a firmware update, but the number of input vectors for a stateful machine such as a computer or handheld device is theoretically infinite in size.

For example, there are numerous devices which have failed due to improper handling of leap years, character encoding, low level hardware errata, race conditions which do not show up in simulation, etc... Testing a device such as the PSV is a fairly difficult task, testing it with 100% input vector coverage is an impossible task.

All it would take for an update to fail for some users yet succeed for all developers is for the user to find one particular set of state conditions which the developers didn't test thoroughly because all unit tests pass normally and compound unit tests also pass. In theory everything works properly. In practice, the developers might not have had a SIM card from a particular wireless carrier on hand and made a single small mistake in handling that particular carrier despite all other carriers working just fine. There are a lot of incredibly rare edge cases and it's impractical to test all of them.
 

cknobman

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I live in DFW and Sony has a huge setup at the local mall with about twenty Vita units for people to demo. Every single one of them was freezing up every couple of minutes when I was there. I could not get mine to work long enough to play a game and a rep came over to help me. Heck, he could not even demo a game for me because it kept freezing up.

The rep told me that the freezing was happening because they were "pre production" models that had "unfinished" firmware on them and assured me by launch it would get cleared up.

LMAO.

Again corporations using their customers as beta testers.
 

jairus24

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[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]How can there be so many issues with firmware updates?I mean.. They are a gigantic company with lots of $$$, they should have around 100 of these for internal testing BEFORE releasing a update.Remember how Microsoft did their testing for WP7? They had an entire lab with hundreds of WP7 devices for testing.Then again the world is infinitely variable, some things you just can't avoid the first time around.[/citation]

But still there's the Messaging Hub bug.
 
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Well compare to Apple, Sony will never leave the system behind (they still produce games and updates). As much as I hate the network freeze whenever I cancel before the start of the download (they will fix this problem) and good thing I avail a 2yr warranty.
 
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