The "blue light of death" plaguing a small number of PS4 consoles is still being investigated by Sony.
Shortly after the PS4’s official launch last Friday, reports began to trickle in of a few units which didn’t seem to function properly due to an affliction many have now dubbed the “blue light (or blue pulse) of death.”
According to the reports, a small number of PS4 consoles aren’t booting up properly, rendering them effectively useless. The normal boot-up procedure goes thusly: when a user presses the console’s power button, an LED strip along the side of the console is supposed to pulse a bright blue before switching to white as it detects the tv it is connected to and starts up. However, certain consoles simply send out repeated blue pulses when started up, never switching to white, and thus never connecting to their respective television.
Sony has no-doubt been busy dealing with this issue and they even put up a list of possible fixes on the official PS4 support forums. Some users have also reported being able to cure the blue light of death by downloading the system’s day-one patch to a USB stick and then installing it onto the console in safe mode. Sadly, none of the fixes provided, including the manual day-one patch install, appear to be full-proof universal solutions and many frustrated customers are simply trying to exchange their defective consoles for new ones.
Stay tuned for new developments on the whole “blue light of death” PS4 issue and, if you’re planning on picking up a PS4 yourself, you might want to brace yourself for a bit of a headache…
