Everyday I see more and more people saying that their PS3's are malfunctioning or breaking as a result of playing Skyrim. Thing is, when you play Skyrim to the point that your PS3 starts freezing and/or crashing a lot, you should stop. Repeated stress on a PS3 (such as freezes, crashes, hard-resets, etc.) can cause severe damage to the console. Sometimes a single unlucky crash can permanently damage a component of the playstation, such as the disc drive, which makes game unreadable.

Now, this isn't a "Skyrim breaks PS3s thread." Crashes and freezes break PS3s, and Skyrim causes a lot of those. This is just a warning, as I've gone through 2 PS3s myself thanks to a crash during Fallout 3 and a freeze during New Vegas. There are no exceptions to these circumstances, like being lucky. Sooner or later, any PS3 will give up the ghost from too many improper shut downs.

On a similar note, shut downs that result from these situations also have a high chance to corrupt data on the PS3, and not just that 150+ hour Skyrim save you have, but your entire PS3 hard drive.

You have been warned.

Yes i agree this is what is happening to us take a look below

http://www.gloopy.co.uk/latest-tech-news/when-will-the-skyrim-lag-be-fixed-on-ps3

There are people saying that the update 4.00 is also causing this.

There are reports from people having freezes and dead ps3 with all sorts of games

Just a warning


Skyrim is also freezing...
Now having the PS3 freezing and a game that freezes...

I have had several instances where my game has frozen while trying to perform a save. My wife told me the same freezes had happened to her and she patiently waited to see if it would fix itself, and (believe it or not) after about three minutes, the game began functioning again. This has worked for me each and every time as well. Merely food for thought before deciding to shut down the system.

So. Bethesda is actually killing our systems now? ... ..

It's not a good state to be in is it everything going t.its up.

The freezing/crashing happens regardless due to a new bug introduced by patch 1.2

That is not the problem. It's when the memory consumption increases to the point that individuals are getting lag too bad to play with. At that point, you are overtaxing your ps3. If you have to restart to continue playing due to a drop in framerate, you should probably take an extended break to let the system cool off. Beyond that, things will only get worse until the problem is fixed, and even then, your save data will most likely still be corrupted by you playing your game until the framerate drops every hour and then saving the glitches to your save file.

Software will not overtax the PS3, 60Gb first gen consoles had cooling issues, 40Gb had Blu-Ray drive quality control problems, 80Gb and up FAT were fine unless you let the fluff clog the exhaust ports and fans, slim use half the power and generate far less heat.

If you actually go into the nuts and bolts, err bit's and bytes of register level data processing between CPU, ALU, GPU and RAM when the output is delayed frames then you would find the system is actually not working as hard once it is in a failure condition.

Data corruption to game data, save data and system data is the risk even with one lockup but most systems can be restored through the service menu unless hardware has failed (head crash). If your system is under warranty then it's not a problem (mine is) and I will have no problem reporting here if it fails in the near future be it when playing Skyrim or another title if the latest firmware is something to do with it.

Yep that's why I haven't played since a little before the 1.2 "patch". Will be nice when/if I ever get to play this again.

It's the software that causes those things. You say it won't overtax the ps3 and then you go on to say ways that it can damage it. Constantly restarting the ps3 right after it has failed isn't just causing the ps3 to work harder, it is speeding up the process of file corruption because there's a reason why everything is going to heck and restarting it doesn't solve the problem.

I love how people are saying "Skyrim broke my PS3". This is silly in my opinion. The reason PS3's are breaking is because people are hard killing their PS3's multiple times just so they can play. It's like a drug. You know what you are doing is bad for you, and can harm you, but you do it anyway. If it's causing hard crashes...STOP PLAYING THE GAME. It's not a finished game for the PS3.

It's nothing to do with the PS3 getting hot as some people are saying, or even that the lag/framerate drop is causing it either.

It's simply very bad coding from Bethesda which they have a responsibility to fix immediately.

I put mine on to play just after 4 o'clock today and by 4:45 it had frozen up completely, requiring a shutdown by the power button 4TIMES!!!!!! I'd only spoken to 2 people and it wasn't even having to do anything complex, I was standing still about to carry on speaking each time it froze up.

Bethesda should be ashamed of themselves. They obviously made the game with their sole priority being playability on a PC and the console versions were obviously just thrown together simply to make some extra easy cash with no concern whatsoever for us as customers. I see at GAME the PS3 and XBOX versions are about half price already, selling for around ￡22. If that's not an admission that the console versions are total [censored] and they just want to offload them as quickly as possible before other prospective buyers here how bad they are, then I don't know what is.

HaHa, even this forum is having trouble now. I just tried to post my previous comment and it took ages and then posted it twice, so I edited the second one with this.

Way to go Bethesda, even your forum is as crap as your game!

I blame the Illuminati and the power of paranoia.

The fact that this is even STILL happening baffles me... I initally was feeling rather civil about this whole situation but now I'm pissed the f**k off

Fix this s**t Bethesda you c**ts

This guy/gal apparently had his/her ps3 broken while playing skyrim: http://www.ebay.com/itm/BROKEN-Blk-Sony-PS3-FAT-CONSOLE-CECH01-read-greater-detail-YLOD-/170741275282?pt=Video_Games&hash=item27c0f91a92

Angry elf.

I don't understand how shutting your power on and off will ruin your ps3... Anyone have a little tech info on this?

I already made a thread telling people to stop playing Skyrim but it got locked.

I pre-ordered the game, yet I've only played it for a week, and it's almost 2012 already. Just shameful.

Sorry but that is not possible.

Sure if a system is on its last legs most graphic intensive games could 'push it over the edge' but you're just trying to scare people for no reason.

Well if your constantly turning the system on and off just to play the game thats problay not good for the PS3 or anything you do that to. If you flicker the light switch that light bulb will give out after awhile. I am no tech junkie or anything but its common sense that turning it on and off constantly due to freezes aint good for your system.

The PS3 isn't quite a lightbulb switch though.

1. You not flicking the switching on and off and on and off like crazy ---- freezes shouldn't happen within an hour of eachother.
2. Light bulbs are flimsy and are made to burn out after so many on and off flips. I would hope PS3s aren't built the same way.
3. I've done hundreds and hundreds of hard resets on computers over the years and not one time did it ever brick a computer.

Hard resets can corrupt data, which is why we're usually advised against it (no matter if we're using a PS3 or a PC). They can't actually physically damage the hardware.

but if it processes the corrupt data, and it has corrupted in a certain way, that corrupt data can damage hardware.

for anyone not beleiving me that software CAN DAMAGE HARDWARE, google "virus that damages motherboard" there was a virus, that literally caused motherboard components to overheat and in some isntances, literally catch fire.

Any game (and even video watching) can freeze it.

Bethesda's stuff does seem to lead the pack though, off the top of my head freeze-wise
Video - 1
inFamous - 1
UFC 2010 - 3 (early on it had a wonky glitch with its physics that made fighters stretch like Mr Fantastic instead of breaking clinch and caused controller lockout)
Oblivion - 2
New Vegas - At least 10
Skyrim - 2 or 3 before 1.2. Now its near constant if I try and play and would easily be cracking 50 if I hadn't put it aside.

Oddly, Fallout 3 never gave me a problem.