Friday 20 October 2006
Sony has confirmed to GamesRadar that it will offer "a service to exchange" any PS3 SixAxis pad that develops a problem with maintaining a full charge.
We reported yesterday that SixAxis controllers will have no removable battery pack, and were worried that the iPod-style inbuilt rechargeable pack would mean that,if they stopped charging properly, the pads would become useless as wireless controllers. However, Sony assures us that "latest generation Lithium Polymer batteries hardly suffer any memory effect at all" - memory effect being a problem where a rechargeable battery can 'forget' its full capacity, and so fail to fully recharge.
But Sony states that "it'll be many years before there's any degradation in terms of battery performance. When and if this happens then, of course, we will be providing a service to exchange these items".
When questioned about how Sony would judge if a controller is simply dead from long-term use or suffering real problems, or if the exchange service would be free of charge, we were informed that no further information is available, however more details will be released closer to the US and Japanese launch of PS3 this Christmas.
