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MS On 360 Wireless Issues
Gamasutra reports on an official release regarding the problems at Wal-Mart stores with the 360 console. From the article: "Wal-Mart's 'network-based inventory management systems can be impacted by products using modern wireless signals,' a claim borne out by some of the Wal-Mart employees noting that other wireless devices, such as wireless phones, would accomplish the same thing. Microsoft has already addressed the problem, and 'a solution to this issue was developed within 24 hours of identifying the issue and we are currently deploying the fix to the affected locations.'" We've reported on this issue previously. A quick call to my local store confirmed that they do have a kiosk installed, but it's still down because of the issue.
After spending an hour on a 360 at Wal-Mart, I was really unimpressed with the graphics. Only notable changes were how much action happening on the screen at once while still holding a good framerate. Other than that, I've seen some pretty tight games on Xbox that looked pretty much the same as the 360. So now Bungie throws a couple ports of Halo on it and you just bought yourself a $400 Xbox with Halo. Deja Vu? I'll wait to see what Sony and Nintendo dishes out. My Xbox will hold out for a good while longer with a huge game library already and a host of accessories. I got plenty of time.
There are different requirements for business devices as compared to consumer devices.
For example, at one time I had difficulty purchasing a workstation from Dell because they intended it for the office and hadn't bothered to get it FCC certified for home use.
So my local wal-mart has a new 360 kiosk installed. From what I can tell, "the fix" is simply replacing the offending wireless controller with a wired one. No wireless controller = no interference problem.
As for the system... I only had a few minutes to play. It looks nice, but I can't see a remarkable increase in quality over the current systems. Certainly not like there was from PS1 -> PS2.
Given these things, I think I'm going to wait until after the launch to decide if I want to buy one.
No other devices with the certification will react negatively to the system's wireless output
That's strange, because I've never had a 2.4ghz phone that didn't interfere with my 2.4ghz wireless network (as in, killing the network connections entirely). The only solution was to move up to a 5.8ghz phone. So let me guess - Uniden, Panasonic and all the other phone manufacturers are manufacturing products completely out of spec and authorization of the FCC?
Why were wireless controllers used in the kiosks if they just had to be chained or otherwise physically attached to the kiosk anyway?
"The only solution was to move up to a 5.8ghz phone"
What's wrong with 900MHz phones? Seems like a solution to me.