It's a good week for Microsoft and its fanboys, because both Playstation 3 and Wii gamers are reporting recent system updates are rendering their consoles nothing more than bricks.

The Wii update was apparently designed to disable consoles that had been modded by pirates, Joystiq reports, but the update has also affected some consoles that hadn't been altered. Nintendo says it will fix any consoles for free that were unfairly bricked.

Sony, on the other hand, is taking a different tack, telling Eurogamer reports of disc-read errors after the firmware update are not caused by the update.

I downloaded the potentially dangerous updates to both my PS3 and Wii and emerged unscathed.

Wii System Update 4.2 bricking unmodded consoles [Joystiq]
Sony: PS3 disc-drive errors not our fault [Destructoid]
(Photo: C.Barr)