Update: BioWare has identified the issue causing Anthem to crash PS4s, and is promising to deliver a fix next week.

　　The launch of Anthem hasn’t exactly gone according to BioWare’s plans. The game has been criticized for a lack of content and polish, but it seems the situation is particularly bad on the PS4 – according players on Reddit and other forums, the game is crashing their consoles. That is to say, the game isn’t just crashing and returning to the home menu -- it’s completely shutting down people’s PS4s. Needless to say, this is a very rare thing for a console game to do. Personally, I’ve never heard of it before.

　　People who have reported these shutdowns say their PS4s reacted as if they’d yanked the console’s power cable out. Upon starting up again, the PS4 has to check and repair its internal database – a process that is accompanied by some stressful warnings and can take several minutes. According to Redditor TheMadTitanGuantlet this process actually bricked his console…

　　“PSA to any Anthem players on PS4 that experience complete shut downs of their consoles: STOP PLAYING!. My PS4 has been completely bricked to the point of not even turning on because of Anthem.”

　　EA and BioWare have yet to issue an official response to the PS4 shutdown issue, but it seems Sony is well aware of the problem. Apparently, Sony has issued Anthem refunds to some disgruntled PS4 owners, which is surprising, as the company is usually rather uptight about returning money. Unfortunately, others have reported not getting a refund.

　　So yeah, you may want to avoid Anthem on PS4 for now. In fact, you may want to avoid it in general – Wccftech’s Alessio Palumbo recently gave the game a mixed review…

　　“[Anthem] looks great, plays even better, and has an intriguing setting to boot. However, the fragmented world design, overabundance of loading screens and severe lack of content considerably drag down the experience, at least for the time being. […] BioWare have the chance to right this ship by adding enough content in the upcoming months, though it won't be easy.”

　　Anthem is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.