SPOnG admires people with lots of money who don't mind using that lots-of-money to benefit the rest of us. Therefore we admire the crazy kids from the totally biased PlayStation Vault who recently tried to test a PS3 to death.

According to the chaps, tests were carried out on a PlayStation 3 in the following environments:

"Environment 1 Typical Family Room
Temperature 73 F
Console Ran continuous for the 108hours with only once incident happening at 12 hours in – a slight vibration coming from the tray area which lasted approximately 20 seconds. For the remaining time allocated no incidents were reported

Environment 2 Back of a Freezer Van – unit was placed inside the closed van with controllers and screen mounted outside, - no one was willing to sit in side the van for any extended period of time
Temperature Started at 50F and was progressively scaled down over the next 4 days to reach 0degrees.
Incidents We noticed a slight sluggishness in playback once the temperature reached 0 degrees , this was maintained for the last 24hours, with 12 hours to go we thought we were going to crash with a sudden , blackout to the screen, this was tracked down to condensation on the cord for the screen.
108hours in and still working fine

Environment 3 Heat Sauna – again console inside and controllers and screen outside.
Starting temperature was 100F and Gradually increased to 120F over the last 24hours.
Incidents Strangley enough we thought this would prove to be the ultimate area to kill the console, and to our surprise the only incident we noticed was a slight burning smell that came in around 64hours at 110F, the console was extremely hot when we finished the overall test but had come thru all environments with flying colours.

This console is now back in a normal environment and working fine."

Obviously, without tipping battery acid all over it, or filling its slots with chip fat, or dropping it into deep water off a high bridge, or giving the people playing Lair on it sledgehammers, you can't actually say that a PS3 is indestructible - but fair play to the lads and possibly lasses who selflessly carried out this 'experiment'. SPOnG salutes you! Come on Major Nelson and the folks at wii.com - it's your turn now.

You can see the full set of test conditions at the source citation at the bottom of this story.


^{Source: PlayStation Vault}