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XBox Goes Down in Public
rosewood sent in a story about the X-Box Crashing in Public. Of course, it obviously is beta hardware so such things are to be expected, but that doesn't mean that you can't point your fingers and generate a nelson style HAHA at a multi billion dollar corporation's expense. They'll get the last laugh in 24 months when no software vendor dares release a game for any other system.
A game demo on the Xbox crashed, and restarting it revealed that it was running on Xbox-like PC hardware. In the uncomfortable pause while the system was restarting, a PR droid gamely tried to explain that the demo systems don't have the unified memory architecture of the Xbox itself.
So, a pre-alpha demo of an Xbox game crashed? Shocking. No, actually, it would be news if a E3 demo of a game which is six months or more away from release never crashed during a demonstration.
Maybe the news is that the final hardware wasn't ready to show at E3. But everyone expected that. Again, it was news that Nintendo did have GameCube hardware at the show.
But hey, good excuse for a link to the GIA!
One key diffrence between the game market and the PC market is gamers are almost expected to have more than one console.
Also PCs are productivity machines game consoles are entertainment.
If the only productivity software available is for one platform you are screwed. Use it no matter how flaky.
If however all the games are for one platform and that platform is no-fun.. We get a new video game dark age.
(Like the last video game dark age... when nobody could sell video games and everyone was playing non-computer based games like chess and RPGs)
You are kinda locked into your computer platform. When you upgrade you only upgrade a part of the system. You need to maintain compatability with your old hardware.
Compaire this to video game consoles. Every upgrade you toss the whole box and start over from scratch. You aren't locked into anything.
Microsoft CAN get all the video game makers to produce all games for Xbox. Microsoft CAN get a lot of gammers to buy the box. But if it dosn't rock it is dead.
The problem is simple. The Xbox dosen't simply compleate with every game console. It compeates with the fickle short attention span of the gamers.
Only the early addopters will scoop them up and try them out. If they suck then you'll see a bunch of web pages on installing Linux on an Xbox and other such uses. This becouse the early adopters will simply put the investment to good use.. That use being something other than playing games.
I expect Microsoft isn't aware of the realitys of the video game console world and think if they can throw out some fancy hardware (working or not) and sell games they'll make money.
If the box is defective then someone will produce something better.
I don't actually exist.
This article is pretty much a Troll as far as I'm concerned. I was at E3 last year for the unveiling of the PS2 and there were plenty of crashed demo stations, the same goes for the Dreamcast games that were showing of the new online play back then.
;).
Now, they didn't put up a blue screen or anything, they just locked up hard on screen, but it's E3, most of this stuff isn't even beta yet. Ya can't blame M$ for someone else's mistake (as much as I'd like to
I was initially really surprised to see "playable Xboxes" on the show floor because I'd just read in Wired that Nvidia was nowhere near ready to start fabbing the chips, and wouldn't be ready until mid or late summer. So these machines (whatever they have inside) don't have either the right processor or the right graphics card -- so however they look (and crash :) has really nothing to do with what the production Xbox will be.
he is going to be horribly insulted when his game console crashes.
Rubbish. You don't know crap about consoles.
On one hand, no game console should ever crash. On the other, having owned EVERY game console, and spent immeasurable hours in arcades, I've seen just about every machine crash.
From the Atari 2600 all the way up to the Playstation 2 I've seen games lock up, crap out, go blank, reset, garble the screen, make horrible noises, and just plain die in plain view.
It's not a matter of -IF- game systems are going to have problems. But it's going to be a matter of how LONG you're going to go before you see them.
Until the Playstation came along, crashes were very, very rare. Now it wouldn't be hard to compile a nice list of modern console games with SERIOUS issues. (I think there are even a few N64 games with serious issues!)
The X-Box is not going to be that much worse than the Playstation 2 because software developers will know it's a static machine and they'll learn how to avoid crashing the system.
Consoles are not PCs, and the software developement process is not the same. It's a static environment that lends it's self to a deeper level of mastery.
So, in 2 years if we see games crashing, rest assured they'll all be Electronic Arts and Acclaim titles.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
But why would you do that? To make Linux look bad?
Well in this particular situation, Microsoft was demoing their product, and tried to show it in the best light, and thus really had no interest whatsoever to sabotage their own product. And you can be pretty damn sure that they have enough money to put a decent enough amount of memory in the box too.
Say no to software patents.
I think Microsoft is going to have to swallow hard and accept the fact that while Joe Sixpack may find his computer complex and doesn't find it odd that it crashes every once in a while, he is going to be horribly insulted when his game console crashes. ("What the..? Piece of shit..")
This is one arena where MS is not the "OS" leader. Nintendo, Sega, Sony, even Atari have established "operating systems" that work damn well on their games boxes and don't blue screen every couple of hours. The fact that XBox crashed in such a high-profile tradeshow displays pathetic programming. When Joe Sixpack learns that this is what he can expect from XBox, he will quite simply go with one of the established gaming vendors that has a box that can actually run.
That's right... We should also throw up our hands and stop using linux, because MS is obviously going to beat us here too. There definitely aren't other consoles to provide competition...
Seriously, was there a glitch in the slashdot or something because I thought we didn't see microsoft as invulnerable over here.
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OK, you say, providing an unreliable product is ALWAYS undesirable; well I maintain that it is more of a problem here because the target market is less technically inclided that that for a computer. Computer owners have the will and ability to pursue problems and correct them. Game Console customers are generally less inclined tward this way of thinking. For this reason, Microsoft will have to adopt the Apple MAC OS support strategy 'If it doesn't work, re-install it'.
Over the past 20 years we have been conditioned to accept bugs in software. In fact the software industry in the only industry where companies are not pushed out of the marketplace for providing defective products. As the adverage level of technical expertise of computer owners declines, this becomes more prevelent, because new users again, just accept this situation as the status quo.
On occasions too numerous to count I've had to tell new computer owners something along the lines of:I should Never EVER have to tell someone that. Game Console users should certainly not have to deal with that.
TO be perfectly fair, Over 15 years of using Nintendo Game Consoles, I have seen them crash. Perhaps 25 times in 15 years. As compared to any (windows based) computer, that record is pretty good.
In the spirit of complete fairness, lets close by looking t it from Microsoft's perspective:That's all I've got folks. I can accept computers crashing occasionally, buy Game consoles? Give me break!
--CTH
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A more accurate story about the crash is here The link is on Microsoft's front page, and the machine that crashed was the first ever working prototype. The machine was running pre-alpha code. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a few crashes during the development phase of a system, do you? I'm sure your code always compiles perfectly the first time you run it, with no bugs whatsoever. I'm sure Linus never had a kernel panic either when Linux was in the prototype phase of development.
If you're going to bash Microsoft, at least come up with some legitimate gripes, otherwise, you come off sounding like a bunch of raving lunatics.