There are thousands of PS4s out there and we have 4 or 5 reports of defects.
And now some people here are already talking about 360 failure rates...
Well, it hasn't really been a very long time. 4 or 5 units that worked at first that no longer work is more troubling to me than 4 or 5 units that didn't work from the beginning.
Way too early to say one way or the other, but I don't see any sense in brushing away someone's concern over the perceived issue. No reason for anyone to be alarmist yet, either.
But it's not like Sony has had a pristine track record for consoles either. I had a PS1 I had to flip over to play it and it eventually stopped working. Had a PS2 with disc read errors after a year. Had 2 OG 60GB PS3s die on me. I had 3 RROD errors on my 360 in the first year, a year where I pretty much only played XBLA games.
Had a second version of the PS1 that never went bad. My Slim PS2 and Slim PS3 both work great. My Elite 360 is loud as hell, but it's been working since I decided to go with that instead (I gave my other 360 that I had returned multiple times to my brother; he ended up getting another RROD a couple years later)
Like this thread, like each of our own situations, this is all anecdotal. I'm getting my launch PS4 Friday regardless. But man, console launches sure do suck sometimes. Good luck OP. Really hope this is all just a rare thing and the inevitable megathreads for PS4 / XB1 console failures sees relatively little activity.