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Xbox 360 Very Unstable
fmwap writes "There have been several postings over at Xbox-scene complaining of crashing Xbox's on new games, with default settings on single player. Crashes on Xbox Live and on startup have been reported too, and Project Gotham Racing 3 crashes before finishing the first lap. Screenshots and Video are available showing the crash."
Well, this is why I always wait a few months before jumping on a console, if not a year. Nothing pisses me off more while I'm gaming than a crash.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
For example, I have a day-of-release PS2 that's still going strong, and I never experienced any of the problems that were reported here and elsewhere with these units. In this case, I assume that my machine is the norm and not the exception, but if I based my opinion on the naysayers at the time it would appear that my PS2 would be in the minority of working units instead.
The air being exhausted from my xbox 360 doesn't feel any hotter then what's comming out of my PC. I think there probably a larger precentage of defects out there, especialy given the rush to market and short supply. Last night I played for about 6 hours strait didn't experience any lockups or other issues like what has been reported.
I understand what you're saying and to a certain extent I agree.
But give how common these problems are, doesn't it strike you as odd? This is almost like there was no testing at all, which doesn't make sense. The developers surely would have caught these weeks, if not months ago.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Who knows, this could be a result of Microsoft rushing the hardware to make it in time for the holiday season.
In the case of PDZ, I'd question the stability of the game from the fact they were stamping the damn thing before running it through Microsoft's test regime. The problem is with both parties frankly, because if you're stamping it before final testing, the you probably didn't do your OWN testing to make sure things were working properly. Or, I bet Rare was biting its fingernails hoping Microsoft didn't find known issues.
Admittedly, this is version 1 of the 360. You can never find all the problems until a product is put out to market and widespread use finds all sorts of issues you never thought of. For all we know, some people having issues maybe have their 360 plugged into a dizzying array of power bars hooked up behind their home theaters. Power issue, maybe? Inadequate cooling? Time will tell.
In any case, I'm pretty glad I'm not an early adopter this go-around. I'm still considering picking one up, but I think I'll wait until the game library's a little less sports-heavy, and maybe for the 65nm chipped versions to hit the shelves.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Microsoft product crashes /. forum that XBox will be very unstable, not because it is designed by MS but because it is nightmare for debugging. You have to make 3 threads application (not 4, not 2) and sync all objects they share. Combine it with complicated interactions of objects in any game, which makes creation of auto-test scripts impossible and default gaming language, C++, which is very uneasy to debug for Multiple threads (compared to say, Java) and they hardly could do any better than this. Cell is designed in much better way, multiple threads (SPUs) are used by low level liberaries (well debugged) but main gaming/engine app. is still single-threadded and therefore easy to debug and stable.
I predicted in
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well, TFA has the actual gathered facts. this reflects what we've been hearing about the x360 kiosks that were installed in walmarts as well. whereas those crashes were written off as the byproduct of improper ventilation in the kiosks and the models being alpha-development hardware, now we are starting to see those werent just early prototypes; those are the same models that are being sold now. remember the whole "the actual power supply wont actually be that big..." argument? well, guess what? IT IS... remember the whole "the final model wont be as noisy..." argument? well it is. what else is there to be said? the crashes arent isolated to one or two software titles; it must be in the hardware somewhere.
this sort of stuff happens with lots of rushed to market consumer electronics. no big deal to me; its what you would expect. all i can say is that ive had my fair share of consoles do weird stuff, but no playstation or nintendo product ive ever owned has repeatedly crashed on me within the first 24 hours of owning it.
the postings are on xbox-scene. if they are biased against microsoft, i cant tell. its an xbox modding/fan site! would multiple users go out and spend $400 plus games, peripherals, etc. on x360s just so they can post screenshots of self-inflicted crashes?
At least this will solve M$'s supply problem after the news makes the news and front pages. Remaining early adopters will want to wait until M$ announces its take on things before thinking of buying again.
On the XBox-360 poll, my answer was Never / X-Mas 2006. Launch prices are too high, I do not care about the coolness factor of having 0-dayz new stuff and I had doubts about how well the initial hardware would work. Quitting the bleeding-edge to stick with mature mainstream stuff has saved me quite a bit of cash and trouble, I'll stick to that.
One thing that is worth sharing is the answer 'makaveli87' (post #79 in the Xbox Forums) gave about his contact with MS Support:
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
My XBOX 360 was waiting for me when I got home from work last night. I had pre-ordered from EBGames.com and selected next day air shipping. My first 5 hours with the machine were not as smooth as I had hoped.
After getting the old Xbox out of the way and hooking up the component cables, surround sound optical cable, wireless adapter, and ginormous power brick, the first thing I saw on the screen turning it on was an error screen. Black, with E74 in the center bottom - there was some other text as well, but I don't remember what it said and most of it was in another language. Not a great first impression, to say the least. I think the problem was the wireless adapter - I was using the one I bought for my original Xbox. I guess they don't play nice together. I'm not sure why really, I thought it was pretty much equivalent to a wireless bridge. Starting up the console without it plugged in resulted in the startup screen. A big error screen is a pretty harsh welcome - they could have at least set it up to start up the system as normal and then display a friendly error message about having to pony up more money for new accessories: "Sorry. Although your shiny new Xbox 360 might be able to play over 200 legacy Xbox games, the wireless adapter you bought is now just a paperweight with lights." That would be better than E74.
After getting the Xbox on finally, I discovered that turning on the controller is less than intuitive. Batteries are included, and simple enough to insert. There is a nice sticker with the finger-pointing-hand icon pointing right at the Xbox 360 semisphere button. The message was clear enough: "Press this button to make this thing work." Nope. I pressed it. I pressed it again. Nothing. I unwrapped the second controller that EBGames so kindly packaged for me, and had the same result. Those damned things wouldn't turn on - no lights, no nothing. It was several minutes before I discovered that you need to hold the button down for several seconds before controller will turn on. I even resorted to RTFM, and still didn't find this crucial tidbit of info. That sucked for a while.
Played PD0 first - no real issues. When I first inserted Project Gotham Racing, however, I saw a nice error screen that told that in order to play this game I must insert it into a Xbox 360 console. I thought that was what I did, but I ejected it and inserted it again just in case. It played the second time around, but when I was done and ready to try out Call of Duty 2, the Xbox 360 just went to a black screen, not the dashboard. Inserting a new disc did nothing - I tried all 4 of them. I had to turn the console off and back on again before it would recognize a game. What the hell? I felt like blowing on the disc and in the tray for old time's sake.
I could gripe a bit about how counterintuitive it is to get a second player to join in games, but I'll chalk that up to my lack of experience with the new interface...
After wading through most of the nonesense, I had a pretty good time my first night with the new system, but damn was it a rough start. The games are pretty fun (PDZ, PGR3, CoD2, Kameo), but at no time did I feel completely blown away by the graphics or the gameplay. Kameo is probably the best of the bunch. I fully expect to encounter more glitches, but there is little chance that I'll send the system away for repairs at this point when most people can't even get their hands on one until next year. That would just be insensitive.