Sony stock dropped 2.7 percent at the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday following an analyst report which stating that PS3 demo units at the Tokyo Game Show overheated and subsequently malfunctioned. David Gibson, of Macquarie Equities said the consoles "operated erratically and had to be repeatedly reset."
Gibson went on to state that, "While the reason for this is unknown, we suspect it may be due to overheating as a result of enclosing the units and the high temperatures at the venue. We are concerned that such a problem has occurred so close to full production and is clearly negative news for the company."
Sony responded to the charges yesterday and stated that they were untrue. But today, Sony reaffirmed its resolve that the report from Gibson was in total error. Sony stated today to Gamespot that, "If you read the report from Macquarie closely, you can see that their reports are unsubstantiated and that comments related to the alleged failure of PS3 units at TGS are also not attributed to a source."
Sony,s corporate communications manager, David Karraker, continued, "Despite the report from Macquarie Securities implying that they had heard of reports of PS3s needing to be rebooted at TGS, SCEI are not aware of any instances of this occurring at TGS, nor have we received any reports from third parties to such effect."
But Sony didn,t totally deny the occurrence of such breakdowns at TGS, and backtracked a bit by saying that if anything happened at all, it was a due to the locale, and not the machine by stating, “The environmental conditions at TGS conspire to test any electrical item. In the case of PS3, the combination of pre-production software, running on pre-production debug units, enclosed in demonstration units without ventilation, and surrounded by so many eager fans that on Saturday and Sunday it was almost impossible to move, are bound to prove a challenge. If indeed, there was the occasional unit that needed rebooting, it was due solely to the adverse environmental conditions within the Hall and not to any more general problem with PS3."
