digitalpress
05-02-2009, 12:39 AM
I haven't been blogging lately because I'm looking for a more permanent home for the almost daily weird stories of a videogame shopkeeper's life. Meanwhile, the tales have been backing up. Thought I'd trickle out a few full stories into a quick summary for you before I forget them entirely. We'll call this a compendium of "It's Not Broken, You Just Need To Read The Manual. Or The Internet."
"My PS3 is broken. It works fine on my friend's TV but not on mine."
I'll admit that I was stumped the first time that I heard this, but it took three keywords in a Google search to solve the problem. PS3's set to run on a high def TV need to be reset in order to play on standard TV's. So now when someone comes to the store with a "broken" PS3 with this symptom, I hook it up, HOLD DOWN THE POWER FOR 10 SECONDS, and voila! It appears on our standard TV.
"MY PSP game doesn't work."
You're not supposed to actually crack the disc out of its shell. The shell is pretty important.
"My PS3 is broken. It won't shut off on its own, I have to physically unplug it."
I actually had a customer attempt to return a PS3 for this reason. I wasn't even sure if this could be categorized as *broken*. Fortunately the user manual explains this, should the user attempt to consult it. It's that pesky power button again. When it's on, just hold it down for five seconds and it will beep and the power light will turn red. Or of course you could hit that little PS logo button thingy on your controller but I know getting into additional pieces of hardware might be considered a little "out of the box".
"My 360 is broken. The controllers don't work at all."
Someday we will live in an age where controllers automatically synchronize to the nearest system. In the meantime, we are in the caveman age (and sub-human user age) af synchronizing. This happens more often with controllers than systems, apparently people forgot how they got their original controller to work in the first place. Or they lost their manuals. And their internet access.
"My SNES is broken. None of my games work in it."
I have heard a saying that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Analogy to my world: In the land of gamers, a weakling who is just strong enough to push a SNES cart down hard enough to engage it with the pins is king.
"My PS3 is broken. It works fine on my friend's TV but not on mine."
I'll admit that I was stumped the first time that I heard this, but it took three keywords in a Google search to solve the problem. PS3's set to run on a high def TV need to be reset in order to play on standard TV's. So now when someone comes to the store with a "broken" PS3 with this symptom, I hook it up, HOLD DOWN THE POWER FOR 10 SECONDS, and voila! It appears on our standard TV.
"MY PSP game doesn't work."
You're not supposed to actually crack the disc out of its shell. The shell is pretty important.
"My PS3 is broken. It won't shut off on its own, I have to physically unplug it."
I actually had a customer attempt to return a PS3 for this reason. I wasn't even sure if this could be categorized as *broken*. Fortunately the user manual explains this, should the user attempt to consult it. It's that pesky power button again. When it's on, just hold it down for five seconds and it will beep and the power light will turn red. Or of course you could hit that little PS logo button thingy on your controller but I know getting into additional pieces of hardware might be considered a little "out of the box".
"My 360 is broken. The controllers don't work at all."
Someday we will live in an age where controllers automatically synchronize to the nearest system. In the meantime, we are in the caveman age (and sub-human user age) af synchronizing. This happens more often with controllers than systems, apparently people forgot how they got their original controller to work in the first place. Or they lost their manuals. And their internet access.
"My SNES is broken. None of my games work in it."
I have heard a saying that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Analogy to my world: In the land of gamers, a weakling who is just strong enough to push a SNES cart down hard enough to engage it with the pins is king.