elmo2006 :
This is totally unacceptable. I don't care if its 4% or .004%; IMHO shelling out 500 bones for a system only to find out that its basically bricked out of the box is BS!
They sold over a million consoles in 24 hours. There is never going to be a production unit with a 0% error rate when it is first released. There is always going to be a bad egg(s) in a batch(es).
At my job, we had just bought 30 refurbished, fairly new, Dell units at $800 a piece (I know, "Ew! Dell," but corporate will only approve Dell's now), and within 1 week we had 1 unit with a failed hard drive. Did we expect that? Yes, that is why we ordered a couple extra (didn't need all 30). It happens, no matter how much money you shell out on a mass produced product.
Sure you may buy one console, or one PC for the home, but out of millions produced, there will always be a lemon unit here and there. Whether you get that unit, or your best friend Jim, it happens. Sony's expected .4% rate covers 4,000 units. Not much to worry about if they can easily sell a few million more in the lifespan of the console.