Did any of you in the UK happen to watch yesterday evening’s Watchdog on BBC One? If not, you missed an interesting episode turned controversial gem.

A segment of last night’s broadcast was dedicated to the ‘Yellow Light of Death’, a term adopted by the PlayStation community whereby a system failure is indicated by the illumination of a yellow light on the PlayStation 3’s front panel. Watchdog recently supplied a technical report to Sony Computer Entertainment UK concerning such faults alleged to affect PS3 consoles.

However, before the show reached the viewers, Senior Vice President and UK Managing Director Ray Maguire sent the BBC a six page letter in response to Watchdog’s findings, challenging the accuracy of the programme’s allegations which, in Maguire’s words, ‘suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the technical issues and a mis-characterisation of SCEUK’s OOW [out-of-warranty] repairs policy’.

Maguire explained:

'The yellow indicator is simply a non-specific fault indicator that can be triggered in a range of different circumstances. For example, it could indicate a problem caused or exacerbated by the console’s power supply, by overheating, by poor ventilation, by software issues or by any one of a range of issues that may inevitably affect any complex item of consumer electronics.

SCEUK has run searches of its customer complaints/warranty database to identify the number of reports made to it regarding instances of system shutdown or failure in circumstances where the front panel yellow indicator is illuminated. The results show that of all PS3s sold in the UK to date, fewer than one half of one per cent of units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated. As Watchdog has a very high awareness amongst the UK audience, it isn't surprising that some people have contacted you with regard to this issue. However we think it is highly unfair to suggest that from an installed base of 2.5 million that the numbers you mention somehow are evidence of a 'manufacturing defect'.'

Watchdog’s report was based upon a sample of three PS3s taken from the aforementioned 2.5 million unit-strong UK user base. To support Maguire, 0.000012% is hardly an adequate percentage on which to base an argument about PlayStation 3 failure rates. Deciding to televise the feature even after Maguire’s correspondence probably wasn’t a smart move on the BBC’s part.

Up until next Thursday, you can watch-back the programme in question via the Watchdog website. Whether contention between Sony and the BBC will continue from here on, we don’t know, but don’t be surprised if the next PS3 update sees the BBC iPlayer disappear from the XMB!