PS Vita overheating cases prompts Government agency to investigate

National Institute of Technology and Evaluation is investigating Sony’s hand-held gaming device PlayStation (PS) Vita following a number of instances of systems burning out while plugged in for charging.

According to reports, 31 cases have been chronicled since the launch of the portable gaming system six months ago. 23 of these cases have been reported in Japan, while eight instances of overheating have been reported in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are deeply concerned about the frequency of burnouts happening during the recharging of the battery and suspect a hardware flaw in the design of PS Vita as the power cable connection slot is seen to be damaged in each instance.

Prompted by a list of incidents submitted to their department, the agency has National Institute of Technology and Evaluation looking into the cases of system damage due to overheating while recharging the battery.

Sony is reportedly fully co-operating with the independent agency and has already sent in a detailed list of burnout cases that have been reported so far.

The company does, however, seem convinced that the overheating and consequent burnouts were not caused because of a hardware issues, but instead took place because of either a wet cable or something else stuck to it, which led to the short-circuiting and thus damaged the Multi-use port.

As it does not believe that the PS Vita is faulty, it has no plans of recalling the systems and expects the consumers to pay for repairs in case their connectors burn out.

The exact statement given by Sony to IGN regarding the overheating of PS Vita system goes like this:

“SCE confirmed that a small number (23 in Japan) of PS Vita’s and USB cable’s multi-use port were damaged during recharging, and have reported them to NITE (National Institute of technology and Evaluation). The cases were caused by partial short-circuit on the multi-use port of PS Vita and USB cable due to small particles or liquid attached to it. We believe this is not product oriented issue. The short-circuit damaged the multi-use port, resulting in being unable to boot the system.”

PS Vita is the successor of Sony’s PlayStation Portable, more commonly known as PSP, and a primary competitor of Nintendo’s portable gaming device Nintendo 3DS. The system opened up with impressive sales figures, but the numbers gradually fell in the subsequent months, hitting an all-time low during the second week of February, with only 12, 309 sales being recorded in the Japanese region. The graphical and performance capabilities of the portable gaming device are greater than its primary competitor, but the latter has been able to stay ahead primarily because of offering Nintendo exclusives such as Pokémon, Zelda and Super Mario Bros., all of which enjoy a massive fan-base.