Sony is feeling some gaming-division woes that week with a double PlayStation 3 whammy. First, Sony’s PlayStation Web site fell victim to SQL-injection attacks. Now Sony’s PS3 firmware update is turning some consoles into bricks.

Sony released Version 2.40 of its firmware on Wednesday with the promise of a more collaborative experience to compete with Microsoft’s Xbox 360. But following customer reports of problems with the patch, the company temporarily suspended the download. Sony says only a few consumers have had problems with the new firmware.

“In order to further assess the issue, we have temporarily taken the firmware offline for further analyzing,” Sony said. “We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.”

Sony’s Black Eyes

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch, called the firmware incident a black eye for Sony that will continue to raise quality-control questions until the company can

come up with some answers about what and why it happened.

“No one wants to have their PS3 turned into a PS paperweight, which is apparently what happened to some users,” Gartenberg said. “Sony was wise to immediately pull the update for general availability so no one else is affected by it. An official firmware upgrade put out by the company should never, ever damage the user’s hardware.”

Any date companies update the core part of a technology, whether it’s a phone, an operating system, or a video-game console, there is the potential for things to run afoul. Seemingly minor issues can cause entire systems to stop working, Gartenberg said. Sony’s disadvantage is the Web age. Even whether the foul firmware only disrupted the gaming systems of a few consumers, the masses know about it.

“The fact that humans are communicating on the World Wide Web about technologies makes it all…

Original post by Top Tech News