I can guess that most of the people who are reading this have either a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360. I can also guess that a good majority of you update your console to the latest firmware whenever it is available. I would also like to believe that each and every one of you would have faith in that Microsoft and Sony would know what they are doing when they implement a new firmware. However, for quite a few people, the last statement may have caused a burst of laughter or a snort of anger.

In a recent post on the Xbox forums, a poster who had downloaded the latest firmware had written in about his Xbox getting the infamous red ring of death. In addition to that there are more people who are posting with the same frustrations, and have received no help whatsoever. On the Sony front, as many of you may know, the update to firmware 3.00 led to issues, mainly with the playing of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The release of firmware 3.01 was earlier this week, and since it's release, there have been an overwhelming amount of issues with the blu ray drive. Similar to the Xbox front, no help has been given, 681 comments and 1 response, it just seems careless.

At this point I would advise to give a week gracing period before downloading any optional firmware updates, just to allow any issues to come up. As of this writing, I have not updated my PlayStation 3 to 3.01, and I am very glad that I decided to wait. It is just disheartening to see these companies release firmware updates that can do seemingly irreversible damages to your hardware, and then they don't give any public response.

I feel that more a more rigorous firmware beta testing system should be implemented in order to decrease these issues. If this is an impossibility, then at very least there should be a response, regardless of how vague it may be. I feel that most people would rather be told that the issue is being resolved as oppossed to hearing nothing. As idealistic as it sounds, I hope that people would stand up and stop getting kicked around by this kind of nonsense. It is up to all of us to get these companies to really change the way that they conduct business. I'm not saying to stop playing and buying games, I am just saying, the only way to bring change is to unite as a community and get heard.