Sony adopts GOP voting Technoloy)Promotional discs wipe out PS2 data

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-erase1dec01.story
Flaw Proves Fatal to Players' Memories
Promotional discs sent by Sony have an error that erases key data on video game consoles.
By Alex Pham
Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2004

Call it the eternal sunshine of the spotless PlayStation.

A glitch in promotional game discs sent by Sony Corp. last month to 1 million PlayStation 2 owners had the effect of wiping out all data stored on the video game console's memory card.

The card, the size of a matchbook, records how far players have progressed in dozens of games.

So all those hours getting to Las Venturas in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"? Lost. Gone too may be the little bits of data that note which weapons a player stockpiles, like the Annihilator in "Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal."

For those who don't play video games, this is the equivalent of, say, accidentally taping over your wedding video. Or having romances wiped from your memory, as in the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

"It doesn't quite rise to the level of tragic," said analyst P.J. McNealy at American Technology Research. "But it's close."<snip>