The latest Playstation 3 firmware update is doing a lot more harm than good for some if its users. Several users have experienced major issues when updating their console to firmware 4.45 and have reported in various places that the console gets stuck after the PS3 Logo when starting up with no XMB displaying.

The official Playstation support forum has a thread full of people reporting in on the issue. Everyone posting in this thread has reported the same issue and is currently at a whopping 86 pages long.

Eurogamer has been in contact with Sony and have reported that the update has been taken offline so no further issues can occur. The word from a Sony spokesperson is that they“aware of reports that the recent PlayStation 3 system software update (version 4.45) has caused the XMB to not display on a small number of PS3 systems.”

“We have temporarily taken 4.45 offline and are investigating the cause of the problem. We will announce when the system update is available for download as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

Let’s hope Sony see to this issue fast or there will be a lot of angry PS3 users with freshly bricked PS3 consoles. Sony will likely update everybody on this issue soon; VGU will keep you updated on what happens.

Let us know if you’ve been unfortunate enough to suffer from the PS3 update issue.