Off to Silicon Heaven

Old adage: things aren't built to last anymore. I've recently found out to my (financial) cost just how fucking true this is when my Playstation 3 packed in and went to the great gameshop in the sky, a victim of the infamous 'Yellow Light of Death'.

Now, on one level this is just frustrating on what I have lost: my as-yet-unfinished 100 hours playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins Lost! My unbeaten record stats on Buzz! Lost! My achievements on games such as Alpha Protocol and Grand Theft Auto IV. Lost forever! It's very hard to take, believe me. Of course, on the other hand it's an excuse to play all these games again, but it's still very irritating.

But what got to me most of all was when I shared my woe was various others, on replying to their question of how long I had owned the PS3 with "about four years", they came back with "wow, not bad then". It seems in terms of lifespan of this model, I've done well, bearing in mind that while I may not hammer the games for hours every day, I did put some serious hours in and it also acted as my DVD player.

Now, the fact that a machine I paid £260 for some years ago should conk out in less than half a decade seems a bit off to me. After all, my PS2 (bought in 2001) and my PS1 (bought second hand in 1999) still work fine. Man, even my Sega Master System that I got for Christmas sometime in the late 1980s still chugs along quite happily.

The problem, it would appear, is that my PS3 had a failure in being able to cool itself, meaning many microchips got fried. Naturally, I've gone out and bought a new model at some expense. I'm a complete bloody idiot like that. Note, mind you, that I stumped up the extra £70 for a new one, not second hand. Because I learnt that the problem that cursed me can only be sussed by ripping open the console. Let this be a warning to anyone reading - lest the Yellow Light of Death strikes you down.