Before you fire up that PlayStation 4 this week to play the new "Guardians of the Galaxy" Telltale series, you might want to make sure that your PS4 console isn't home to some creepy critters that Star-Lord himself would want to vanquish.
A new blog post over at Kotaku has gone to great lengths to explain one of the greatest problems facing your PS4 (or any highly ventilated, highly heated console): Bugs love that stuff. And console repair shops aren't surprised anymore when their technicians have to pull out whole cockroach families from the power unit on the PS4. In fact, one repair shop up in New York has started charging a $25 "roach fee" just to remove them:
I heard about the PS4's roach problem at an independent console repair shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. XCubicle is a clean and well-kept business where locals drop off their broken consoles to get diagnosed and repaired. Its co-founder, Patrick Che, was listing the types of repair issues he encounters on a day-to-day basis: coins inside disc drives, 3DS mods gone wrong. That's when he pointed to the "roach bags," black garbage bags heaped up in the corner of the room.
"You see those bags?" he asked. "Those are bags full of roaches. Those are all dead by now."
According to the same Kotaku blog, some console repair techs reported that at least half of the PS4s they service are full of roaches. For some perspective, "Uncharted 4," the final game in one of the PS4's big native franchises, sold almost 3 million copies in its opening week.
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But why do roaches love the PS4 more than, say, the XBox One or various Nintendo products? It’s because the PS4’s ventilation grates are wider than other consoles, and those vents are located at the bottom of the console, which makes it easier for roaches to burrow their way in there. And the PS4 gets hotter than other consoles because of its internal power supply.
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To make matters worse, if you don't have a good independent game store to fix the problem for you, you're out of luck, because Sony won't repair them, according to Kotaku.
This video explains how independent store repairmen look for the critters in your console.
How can you prevent this problem? Kotaku recommends storing your consoles out in the open where they have room to breathe, and stored high up, where roaches can’t climb.
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