The Blinking Blue Lights of uh, I don't really know... they're not blue lights of death and they don't doom your console instantly to indefinite inoperability, the lights just seem to keep the PS4 from functioning the way it's supposed to. Sometimes the lights seem to relate to hard drive issues, sometimes disc drive issues, sometimes OS issues and sometimes it's something else altogether. Well, Sony has released a new troubleshooting guide for those suffering from the blue blinking lights (even though light doesn't really blink).
There's still no definitive outline or definition of what the blinking blue lights actually mean, but they do relate to some measure of system malfunction. According to Sony's lengthy thread on the official PlayStation community forums, they offer up a very comprehensive diagram of various issues that may be attributed to the blinking blue lights of the PlayStation 4.
There are four main possibilities that Sony has pinpointed to the cause of the blinking blue lights, listed as follows:
* TV compatibility
* Issues with PS4 power supply
* Issues with PS4 hard drive
* Issues with other PS4 hardware
The blue lights are separate from the red light issue and the HDMI pin issue, and seems to be more prevalent and pervasive – based on user feedback – than the other two aforementioned issues.
The strange thing about it is that the troubleshooting guide, lengthy as it is, doesn't necessarily offer a clear cut explanation as to what the exact problem is or why it does what it does. This very topic became the outline of a Kotaku article examining how there is no clear fix or clear-cut explanation for the problem itself.
Of course, a lot of the people experiencing problems with their PlayStation 4 are turning to forums, Twitter, and other social media outlets to express their rage, including posting one-star reviews on Amazon and absolutely hammering Sony on the launch of the PlayStation 4.
While these issues persist, it should be noted that any big electronic consumer device launching in such a high-profile way is bound to encounter some hiccups along the way; it happens with Apple and the iPhones, it happened with Microsoft and the Xbox 360 and it's likely to happen with the Xbox One.
For now, Sony is at least acknowledging the units that are supposedly faulty and aiming to troubleshoot them (even though the information is somewhat lacking at this time). Hopefully, though, the 0.4% failure rate is right and it doesn't shoot up the way it did for the Xbox 360. So far, though, Sony has managed to sell more than a million units and there are allegedly only 4000 or so broken units out in the wild. That ratio isn't too bad, but it's still an unfortunate thing for gamers out there with non-functioning units.
If you're encountering issues with the red lights, blue lights or other issues, be sure to contact Sony's support if the troubleshooting guide didn't help you fix the problem.
