Square Enix and Sony Computer Entertainment of America have been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by a San Diego gamer upset over a glitch in Final Fantasy XIII that can cause PS3 consoles to freeze up and become useless.
The lawsuit, which was filed on the behalf of all similarly situated US owners of Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3, alleges that SCEA and Square have been so busy blaming each other for the bricked PS3s, that they haven't remedied the problem or repaired the bricked units (or are charging users for the repair).
The suit alleges numerous violations of California law, including the Unfair Competition Act, the Consumer's Legal Remedies Act, and that the systems breached express and implied warranties. In addition to the contractual and consumer law claims, the suit also pleads claims of negligence and unjust enrichment.
Interestingly, the 28 page complaint cites various posts on Sony's forums as evidence that Sony was aware of the brickings immediately after the Final Fantasy XIII launch.
At this time, neither Sony nor SCEA has commented on the lawsuit. A copy of the Complaint can be viewed here (PDF).
Dan Rosenthal is lawyer and analyst for the video games industry
Comments
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Well, no matter who loses in a Class Action Lawsuit, the only ones who win are the lawyers for both sides.
Anyway, where can I learn more about this problem?!? I just finished RDR last night and was getting ready to get back into my FFXIII game, then I see this article that it could brick my system? Where may I go for more info (I'm at work, so Google Fu isn't my friend at the moment. I can search when I get home).
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
It's far too early for that. It is the kind of case that one could expect to settle, however, there is likely to be some wrangling between SCEA and SE as to who is primarily responsible for the damage. If one party is less or not responsible, I'd expect them to contest the issue.
-- Dan Rosenthal
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Thank you Mr Rosenthal.
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Would Mr Rosenthal care to comment on the likely success of this case?
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Final Fantasy XIII seems to be becoming a case study in 'things going wrong with the industry'...... starting with a lesson you think companies would have figured out by now... 'if you are developing a game for one console and that console falls out of favor, do not try to salvage what you have done and paste it into another console. this never works'.
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Uhh the 360 port has nothing to do with the lawsuit in hand.
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Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Lol, yeah, which I find hilarious. When FFXIII first came out, PS3ers were trying to kick the "console wars" into full gear by mocking the XBoxers for the ever so slightly lower resolution of CGI movies, and for having 3 discs instead of one.
But the XBox version of the game runs perfectly, and the PS3 version can kill your system. I just love the irony.
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
"I just love the irony."
At least this one can be avoided by simply not playing FFXIII, unlike the XBox 360 RRoD, which people are still getting...
Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
I do not think thats the problem sony offers decent cross console(360) development support. So I think its more to do with how fickle the hardware is.
Besides the BR lens which seems to be hunted by DREs besides that the system has some nasty firmware quirks.
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Re: Bricked Consoles Spur Suit Against Sony & Square Enix
Yeah, Sony has its own sins to answer for here... a game, no matter how buggy, should not be able to brick your hardware unless it had something crazy like a firmware writer embedded in it.
Though I also in a way blame game universities. They have, in many ways, started teaching console development like a branch of PC development rather then the embedded system it is... plus they try to churn out devs as quickly as possible so they only barely touch on complex topics like writing thread-safe code or working in resource constrained enviroments. That was something that really annoyed me about coders complaining when the PS3 first came out.. they were completely unprepared for thinking in terms of multi-processing enviroments (that did not automagicly hide the details for them) and blamed Sony.