Sony recently released a new update for the PlayStation 4 (4.70) on Tuesday, May 30. Its not entirely known what the update is supposed to fix or improve, as the description just says, “This system software update improves the quality of the system performance.” That’s good and all, but according to a report by Tech Times, some PS4 owners have been facing problems with the update, causing some serious issues that prevents the PS4 from booting up and locking up on the menu screen, essentially turning their consoles into very expensive bricks.
The issue has been reported numerous times on Reddit and PlayStation forums, with the error making it very difficult just to boot up the PS4, often taking multiple times to do so. In many cases, the error even disables their networking capabilities.
One Reddit user, DoctorCarty, goes into full detail on the error. After turning on the PS4 from rest mode, this happened:
Came back and the PS4 turned on normally, but the normally moving blue waves of the default theme weren’t moving, controller did nothing, music still played though. Anyways, hard reset by holding down the top button on the machine itself, tried a few times to no avail…
After twenty minutes and what DoctorCarty described as a “mini-panic attack,” the PS4 finally turned on properly, but without having downloaded the update. After another attempt to download the update ended with the same thing happening, the user elected to delete it and ignore the update entirely.
The error doesn’t seem to be targeting any specific type of console, as both PS4 and PS4 Pro owners are experiencing the same problem. There are also some owners of both consoles that were able to download and install the update without any issues. So far, it seems the bug is affecting consoles at random.
Sony has yet to release a fix or workaround for this issue. Until then, PS4 owners will have to sift through the forums for help.