Slashdot Mirror
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."
Seems like they got 1699 Parts of the x-box to the market:
/ 156253
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/18
and it seems to be the same in other forums too:
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=391764
..placing a book under one corner?
Wow, a Microsoft product is unstable. This is news!
Microsoft product crashes
Pope is discovered to be a Catholic
Family of bears accused of defecating in forested areas
what?!? No blue screen of death?
"You killed my yogurt!" --Fred Fredburger
Project Gotham Racing 3 crashes before finishing the first lap
Sounds like someone needs to improve their driving skills and stop blaming the system.
for every smirk on the /. readers' faces who read this article and have preached against Microsoft in the last few years.
but seriously.... I wonder why Sony takes it's time developing their console as opposed to rushing it out the door to try to gain marketshare like some other greedy corporation does...[/sarcasm]
I hope this costs Microsoft DEARLY
Get paid to code OSS
Does anyone know if these things are upgradable? or what the process is? Microsoft has a history of being first to markwt with buggy software. In the past it has been a strategy which has worked for them. Still, I long for the days of cartridges. Just reminissing - please don't flame me. But do answer if you know about upgradability/
So the new XBoxes are crashing...let's just hope they've addressed the problem of the XBox bursting into flames and killing you. ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So half a dozen out of the hundreds of thousands of new Xbox 360 owners are having problems. Why does Slashdot have to state "Xbox 360 Very Unstable"? I've had bad installs of Linux too. Would we see the headline on Slashdot "Linux Very Unstable" too?
This is normal. With the massive number of parts in the Xbox 360, it's to be expected that some are defective on a few units. Microsoft will give them a replacement. Move along, nothing to see here.
This is why I never buy technology when it is first released on the market...
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
...where *did* you think all those Windows Millenium Edition licenses went?
Shenzhen Chuanghui Electronics Co...? http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 21/0539250&tid=118&tid=137
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
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.
A customer.
Furthermore, "geek up" the product so the alpha-testers will wait in line for 18 hours and pay twice as much as for competitor's hardware for this "priviledge".
Com'on, this is a bad hoax against Micro$oft. The screenshots are not even blue!
Million Dollar Screenshot
ME?! Is that you I smell! Get out of that Xbox THIS INSTANT!
These guys have a fairly big list going too.
8==8 Bones 8==8
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27893
80 or 110W CPU (I have heard both ways), a GPU equivalent to the ~100W R520, a HD, RAM and a constantly spinning DVD in a box how big?
And people wonder why they crash. Anyone who has one want to comment on how hot they get?
-Charlie
... You know they won't. The problem with today's software (and combined hardware/software) manufacturers and vendors has nothing to do with the programmers themselves. Companies have simply responded to the paying public's demand for new toys with no wait. We want our toys NOW, not later. And buying trends for YEARS now have indicated that computer and computer program buyers are more then willing to purchase a program and then spend a significant amout of time patching and updating it- often right out of the box.
Microsoft responded to this in the way that gained them the most extra profit- they rushed the system to market without (apparently enough) random batch testing or other beta testing. People (lots and lots of people) bought the systems. They are crashing. Microsoft will now start to release patches (probably over Live) that correct this bug or that. The paying public will accept this and install them. People who buy XBox 360s down the road will expect the patches to be installed before they buy the system- but they'll still expect to have to install more at some point.
It's NOT the computer companies fault things have grown this way. They- like all companies- are a FOR-PROFIT venture, and will do whatever they think is the thing that will garner them the most profit. Period.
Welcome to Capitalism, enjoy your stay.
You have to love the sheer audacity of posting a link to an MPEG on the Slashdot homepage.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Should have waited for Service Pack 1!
Is that all it takes?
I would hope people would take more of a wait and see approach to see how widespread the problem is.
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.
They did (at least with the first Xbox) make it easy to upgrade. I'm not sure how that will work with the Xbox 360s that don't have hard drives. When Halo 2 first came out it had a bug that caused it to stretch images on certain HDTV widescreens and you had to have Xbox Live to download the patch which fixed it. Lots of people were pretty mad there for a few weeks (including myself because true 16:9 was touted as a big new cool feature).
I've heard an unconfirmed rumor that Microsoft suspects that the XBox's are crashing because of the proximity of nearby Linux boxes. One employee, using an "open source detector", claimed to have established a 3-mile "Cloud of Evil" around a Red Hat server. The employee went on to say "This conclusively proves that Linux is a danger to our children". Steve Ballmer's statement (which was taped to a chair and thrown through a newsroom window) blamed Google.
Sony has had problems with the PS2... the first batch had a significant amount of CD/DVD drive failures; I had one, but sony eventually replaced it for free.
In fact, there has been a class action over the issue:
http://www.ps2settlement.com/
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
>> Project Gotham Racing 3 crashes before finishing the first lap
You're playing a racing game. You're gonna crash.
Planned lack of testing might have been a contributing factor to the decision to restrict the number of units sold at launch. I mean, if they new it was going to be the most gawd awfully bugged first revision in console gaming history, they could save a lot by having fewer machines to recall.
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
Have you tried blowing on the DVD, and wiggling it around a bit?
somebody mod the parent post up.
At work we get large quantities of hard drives from various manufacturers and out of every batch we usually get 1 or 2 that just will not spin up, or have other errors prohibiting their use.
Considering the condition of some of the boxes I've seen people carrying out of the stores, it's no wonder there isn't a few machines that have had parts wriggle free.
They probably make sure the system boots to the dashboard and then send it on for packaging.
I seriously doubt that ANY video game console company does burn-in testing for 24-hours before shipping the unit to market. The costs would be (more) astronomical.
wouldn't it be odd to find out that DRM is causing the xbox to crash?
:)
Odd, no. Ironic, maybe. Funny as hell, ABSOLUTELY!
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
My friend opened his up and got an error immediately. Turned it off.... and back on and got the same error. So he held down the power button for an extended period of time and YAY it fixed it somehow and he's not seen any errors since. So much for Quality Assurance. No reports of crashes yet though on the games.
How many game saves fit on the premium 360's hard drive after all the software updates?
You have to admit though. Those are some decent crash screens. Not unlike the screens you'd see when pulling out a Atari 2600 game cartridge with the power on. Hey wait, the crashes themselves look better than atari 2600 games. Oh no!
Well, I don't know about you, but if I buy systems with a *pre-installed* OS, no matter whether it's Linux or Windows or OS X or Plan 9 or whatever, I expect the system to be in a usable state. There is such a thing as quality control.
This is even more true when you consider that a console is not like a PC - from a customer's point of view at least, it's much closer to any regular home appliance. To give an example, if you bought a new toaster and it didn't work, would you then say "that's OK, it might not have worked if I had installed NetBSD on it myself, too"? I don't know about you, but if I buy a toaster, I kinda expect it to be able to produce toast. And if I buy a game console, I kinda expect to be able to play games.
And seriously, how many console models have you seen in your life that had this kind of failure after the initial launch? I've been buying consoles ever since the mid-80's, and I don't recall something like this happening ever, so I definitely would say that it *is* news indeed, in the truest sense of the word. Or is it just that it shouldn't be reported because it's Microsoft and you're a drooling fanboy who cries "M$ bashing! unfair! everytime he sees something that might be construed as being critical of M$?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I waited up all night in front of a Best Buy to get mine. I also purchased Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo. With both games, I've spent most of my time playing PGR3. I have not had one crash, and the only trace I've seen of it is on Kotaku.
As a note, the system is very thermally unstalbe. I have mine vertical, and every vent is needed. If you were to block any of the airholes for any reason, or to trap the air exiting via the rear of the sytsem, the system potentially could overheat. The exhaust was very high temperature when I checked it after an hour or two of PGR3.
My rig (for reference) was running at 720P for part of it, 1080i for the other part (to compare whose transcoder was better, my TV or the XBOX). I'm on XBOX live, and upon boot, the system updated itself and restarted. This could have been a critical update that fixed the problem that people are talking about.
All and all, I'm quite impressed with the hardware. The emulation works better with some XBOX games than others. For instance, Forza motorsport runs sluggishly on the 360, yet Dead or Alive 3 runs flawlessly.
The live marketplace is impressive. They have HD downloads available, such as music videos and trailers. In addition, you can download new games such as bejewled from Microsoft. There are also themes that can be purchased via live, and as Penny Arcade themes are available, many people should be able to get their themes for sale on Live.
If I see crashes, I'll repost. However, so far, after 10+ hours of operation, most of which with PGR3, I have no crashes or errors to report.
How can you call the XBOX 360 'very unstable', based purely on a couple of sporadic forum posts, by anonymous people with no real media credibility. While I'm certainly not saying they are fake, I am saying some people have an agenda. And frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if some "hyper-ultra anti MS zealots" that frequent this site would do such a thing purely for kicks and a lack of maturity, such is the nature of those with a religeous devotion to something. Also, who says these people havn't opened up the XBOX, had a fiddle, tried some modding etc...
Furthermore, with the exponentially increasing complexity of electronic products these days, it's to be expected that there will be some software bugs that need ironing out. A console as complex as the XBOX 360, with advanced networking features and a system such as Live will of course have some bugs to iron out. Microsoft will replace faulty units, because they wish the XBOX 360 to succeed and public outcry wouldn't be to there advantage.
Finally, When Slashdot posts an article about the XBOX 360 launch, with links to sites effectively praising the console as an excellent product, with respected sites such as [H]ardocp giving it the thumbs up, it's poor journalism to immediately follow up with an instability article with poor sources. Common sense tells me if the XBOX 360 was 'very unstable', sites such as [H]ardOCP and GameSpy who would be testing and evaluating it extensively would also have run into issues, yet I see no mention of this on their sites.
Very unstable? Rubbish. Editors need to be more responsible and ensure articles have an appropriate headline.
The XBOX shipped with (no less than 3) critical flaws in its BIOS, allowing unsigned code to be ran provided that it was given the OK from signed media (I.E. Mechassault, SplinterCell, 007). Perhaps they will write cleaner code next time?
You're combining things here. There were 3 flaws in the boot code. This is MS' fault.
That has nothing to do with the overflows in those games. Unless MS wrote those games, they aren't responsible, unless they're auditing the code before signing it.
The graphics glitches in those screenshots look like what happens when a modern graphics card overheats. For some reason the contents of the video RAM tend to get corrupted (covered with checkerboard blocks or rainbow colors) right before the system halts altogether.
I don't have an Xbox, but maybe you could try running it with the cover off or a fan blowing on it?
For all we know, it could be just bad game programming.
.0.00 release should be trusted to be stable, wait for an update.
The biggest problem I have with Microsoft OSs is the security, maintainability and usability.
Under no circumstance do I believe that the NT line is unstable except for third party crap. Since 1998, I've had fewer BSODs with the NT-derived OSs than one every two years. The ones that I did get were actually because of bad hardware or a bad driver.
Besides, no
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
"System Error: Contact XBox Customer Support"
in 9 languages.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Of course, they've also shown that they can win with their anti-competitive practises. Too bad there's not some sort of legal entity that will call them on it...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Most of the posts says that the console works great after several continous hours of playing. Only a few reported problems... it seems to me this is a /. overeaction.
DON'T STEAL MUSIC!
It sounds like either the dev kits weren't in sync with production units, or someone as MS decided to add a last minute DRM to the BIOS.
It sounds like you're just making shit up.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
In general, a company and/or the executives can get sued by the shareholders if profit isn't the primary goal.
More specifically, it's "shareholder value", which is pretty much profit except that you might disguise the profit from the IRS.
And for what it's worth another poster has already pointed out that Sony had some issues with the PS2 and there were lawsuits over it. These things do happen once in a while, get the replacement and get over it.
XviD AVI3 60/motherboard/3260052289.xvid.avi
http://69.93.36.237.nyud.net:8090/xbox-scene/xbox
This is reason #1 why I'm waiting about a year to buy a 360. For MS to work out most of the big bugs.I can't say I feel sorry for anyone who's experiencing these problems. It's a risk you take when you rush out to buy untested technology. It shouldn't be this way, but its a fact of technology life. If people wouldn't be so quick to go out and buy, maybe companies might start smartening up.
Other reasons include:
-My current X-Box currently still have lots of life left in it.
-Prices will go down.
-Won't have to stand in line to get one, or go from store to store.
-More selection of games.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
We salute you!
My XB360 crashed multiple times playing Quake 4. Personally, I think its an over heating issue.
Since the machine is pretty loud I put it in my home-entairtainment cabinet, which it shares with a receiver, DVD player, and an old VHS. While the cabinet is relatively large, when I close the glass door and play the XB360 it gets very hot in there after playing (and I've been playing alot).
Quake 4 seems to really stress the XB360 out since there is an aggrevating amount of slow down in the game. Several times when Quake 4 got too hectic my XB360 froze up on me. After I felt how hot it is I took it out of the cabinet and so far (being since last night) I haven't had any problems with crahes so far.
apparently team xbox started a poll. Very small sample but 15% of xbox 360's are freezing. It will be interesting to see what happens to the percentage as the sample grows.
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=392599
Perhaps you could share with us your incredibly accurate estimation technique? I'm sure many of us would love to know how you've solved a problem that no-one else in the business has managed to solve effectively for years.
Seriously, estimation is hard. I'm sure you know that really. The best development shops I've worked for deal with this problem by having plans that can adapt to unexpected delays, including putting back the shipping date if necessary. Perhaps we're lucky; for some projects, that simply isn't an option. But it's a lot better than pretending you can estimate a project that's going to take hundreds of man-years accurately ahead of time, and then betting your business on being able to make your predicted shipping date.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What was it all those posters above were saying about checking things before pushing them out the door...
Yup, not enough synergy in the leveraging of ROM bits, it'll get your z-buffer out of sync with your bit blitter every time. When will they learn?
Funny, I've been buying consoles since the Atari2600 and remember EVERY console having some kind of weird promblem at launch. It's more publicized now with the advent of the internet... but I even remember th Commodore64 having recalls.
Why exactly are we modding up comments that are based purely on the random thoughts of some /. reader?
Here, I got something for you all to waste some +1 Insightfuls on:
I looks like some Sweatshop worker must have unsoldered the R15 line on 50% of their workload!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I'm 99% sure Microsoft was well aware of the instabilities before the product launch. It actually works to their benefit, as they can now inform gamers that they need to connect to Live to get the software patches
My tech blog
They- like all companies- are a FOR-PROFIT venture, and will do whatever they think is the thing that will garner them the most profit. Period.
This is a most rephrehensible comment to make. You claim that since a company wants to make a profit, they will, therefore, by definition, do ANYTHING that might make them money. For instance, if kidnapping children and selling them into sexual slavery in Southeast Asia is profitable, then ANY for-profit company would have no compunction at all in doing so. This is a wrong-headed, insulting, and stupid idea. Perhaps you believe it because you believe axiomatically that the profit motive is evil.
Welcome to Capitalism, enjoy your stay.
You and I have very different understandings of capitalism. To me, capitalism is when people trade value-for-value as free individuals. It is immoral to make money through force or fraud, and those who do it should be punished. Capitalism is merely that which exists by default when individual property rights are protected by the state, free people are allowed to trade, and force and fraud are punished. It is the celebration of individual excellence. It allows companies like Ben & Jerry's and Starbucks to exist which, despite their leftist lip-service, are actually shining monuments to the success of capitalism over older, inferior competitors.
To you, capitalism is probably the source of all the world's misery. I think that's an article of your faith as opposed to observations of reality.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
What we should be reporting on, what is MORE newsworthy than just the instability, is Microsoft's reaction to it. If and when they find the problem, will they replace defective units? It's usually at times like these that a company shows its true committment to its customers and product. As an example, when the iMac flat panel line first came out there were lots of customers complaining of fan noise, and Apple was quick to figure out what was causing it and send out replacement parts to affected users. My first Mac was an iMac with such a problem, and their reaction to the problem was entirely reassuring to someone who bought in on a 1.0 version of a product. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on the news of these issues to see what kind of support is there for people.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
These guys did pre-emptively what alot of XBox360 owners must feel like doing right now.
"I have not had one crash, and the only trace I've seen of it is on Kotaku."
What, exactly, is "a trace" of a crash? Sounds like "a little bit pregnant" to me...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
the video and screenshots have been proven fake.
As much as the /. crowd complains about Microsoft products you would think they would realize buying version 1 of the 360 is like installing SP2 for Windows the day it comes out.
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
Also, where I work has used a 3rd-party embedded network processor card which has had problems with both the DRAM timing, and incompatibities with specific types of SRAM chips that were ordinarily within spec. We found this out pretty quickly because I wrote a better memory test than anyone else was using with this board. And we have other PC-based equipment that has had a couple of incidents with bad motherboard DIMMs.
Hard crashes that affect a single digit percentage of users all running identical hardware and software, especially when some of those crashes are during boot.
[tinfoilHat]Now we know why Microsoft wanted to limit quantities on the launch day![/tinfoilHat] Ha, ha, it's not cool that the customers with these problems probably had to buy a couple hundred bucks of accessories and games just to move to the front of the line. This is not where you want to find out that your brand new expensive game system suffers from dodgy RAM chips.
This better not be happening in Japan, or they'll be stuck as the "DOABox" like the original XBox was. (Ha ha, that's funny, DOA, ha ha.) And if it is, they're probably going to have to send field service guys to people's houses to bow and gomennasai profusely as they swap out equipment to satisfy pissed off Japanese customers.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Everybody knows that this problem can be solved by boiling your Xbox.
The obvious solution aside, I'm surpried that people are actually taking this story seriously, at least this early on. Does the overheating Xbox story of the last launch ring any bells? Exactly how over-hyped was that again? I'm holding off on buying a 360 myself, but not for this reason.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
We're taking components and cramming them in spaces with insufficient free air delivery and we're surprised when they crash and burn.
I've lost many hard drives and three computers (one Linux, one Mac and one Windows,) to "heat prostration". Sometimes the cases are not really capable of handling everything we can shove in there.
I hate the monolith in Redmond as much as the next guy but... heat is the enemy here.
I bet NOBODY who lives in a frozen food section at Safeway is reporting a crash.
>>First off, my other consumer electronic devices (including my 600W receiver) have absolutely no problems with over-heating. As do, I'm assuming, most electronic devices made today.
>>Secondly, as mentioned in my first post the cabinet is relatively large, and my VHS and DVD are obviously turned off when playing my XB360; there is ample space and ventilation in the cabinet, I put it on the shelf where my old Xbox used to sit.
>>Thirdly, MS should obviously design their "home entertainment" device to be put in, well, a "home-enteirtainment" cabinet. Its unresonable to expect every person to use their XB360 in "frozen food section at Safeway" .
It should also be mentioned that even outside the cabinet it's incredible hot. When I eject the DVD to the machine I can feel the heat of radiating from it, and the game is suprising hot to the touch. I've never had this problem with my original Xbox (that sat in the same cabinet), which I also bought on lauch day, and has been incredibly reliable since the day I got it. Personally, I think MS caved into the critism of the size of the original Xbox and stuffed the hardware into too small a place relative to heat disapation.
"We whine when they delay and push back release dates of their OS over and over again but when they finally do come out with something "on time" (whatever that means) and it's not up to par we give them shit.
So they can't win. Everyone knew that already but seriously it's not going to cost them anything."
If they had released it on time and had it work then it would have been a win.
This is a Video Game console! You are not supposed to have to patch it. It really is supposed to just work!
Even if the patches where to add new functions or to fix "minor" issues that might be okay but not random crashes.
If this is really happening Microsoft very well may have to pay for it. I have played some of the demos and while they where nice I didn't feel a need to rush out and buy it. If these start being returned it could be a big deal.
I am more interested in the Revolution. Right now graphics have reached "good enough" I am more interested in game play now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What the Wall Street Journal article failed to capture, however, was the correlation between the recent (mid) production line testing (equipment) glitchs at the factory (PR'd as bottlenecks in the testing methods), and the reality behind those 'two hours or so of automated testing and five minutes of manual testing'...leading us to today's headline.
Those two hours of supposed 'automated testing' are hands-off, burn-in time only (no loaded media)...no system testing involved, only logging the device id and power consumption while it sits on the burn rack. The five minutes 'manual' is more like two, with 'testing' being nothing more than voltage leak checks and on/off stabs.
"It's broke, Jim, and since my expertise is limited to human anatomy, there's no way in hades you're going to use any damn xbox until we get back to earth....sorry."
...and 99% of consumer products nowadays are crap. This is something I've noticed, especially in programming, is that quality is meaningless.
Quality is not some auxiliary adjunct property of an item, it is the SOLE value of the item. Consider, for instance, a pair of roller skates. We can abstractly quantify their quality from 0 to 100. Skates that do not work, or, perhaps, a couple of rocks, would have Skate Quality = 0. Skates that glided effortlessly, with zero chafe, are light and breezy (or warm if ice skates), would have Skate Quality = 100 (being the perfect pair of skates).
Now, if you buy an item with Skate Quality = 0, anticipating skating value, you just got robbed. Selling a product of low quality is actually, in my opinion, misrepresentation and fraud.
You buy things for their utility. If you do not receive that utility, you have been robbed. This is the state of affairs today--you are being systematically robbed. For instance, I paid for an eyeglass prescription THREE TIMES, once from an opthamologist, and 1) they all varied considerably, and 2) I still don't have a good prescription for my left eye. That's money stolen from me as far as I'm concerned because I have received little value for my money. Will I have to buy a dozen prescriptions and do a mathematical average of them? WTF is wrong with this world?
Capitalism is broken.
for Workgroups
This story was created, or at least hyped, by retailers to convince us to by extended warranties. I can hear the blue shirted dweebs now, "Oh man you've GOT to buy the warranty. Haven't you heard?! These things are crashing right and left!"
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I am a Software Quality Engineer. I know first had where testing falls on the list of priorities for a business. Microsoft does not value testing and QA the way they should. The game industry as a whole needs to start adopting QA practices if we are ever going to get beyond this current generation of consoles. We keep throwing complexity into the fire and expecting things to be fine... that complexity is the fuel that will halt the industry and send us back to the 1970's.
You will see more of this as time passes and when complaints start rolling in Microsoft will wiggle its way out of this mess but in the end deliver much less than what they promised.
DO THE SMART THING AND WAIT UNTIL THEY GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER!!!
MAKE THEM RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR MISTAKE!!!
DO NOT BUY AN XBOX 360 UNTIL MARCH!!!
I smell a recall
Since I wasn't lucky enought to get an xbox 360 yet, Send all your crashing xbox 360's to me, I will be more than happy to test them for all you people complaining.
Rob
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.
Step 2: Stop playing Sony music CD's in your new XBox. Everyone knows by now only MS O/S's are vulnerable to being rooted by Sony malware.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is a lot of the reasons I got out of console gaming and stick with my PC. None of these consoles seem to be reliable.
A friend of mine is an avid console gamer. So far, he's gone through 2 playstations, 3 PS2's and and Xbox. The only thing he hasn't managed to break so far is his Gamecube, which is a testament of Nintendo building a console to last. Just wait for the PS3 and the revolution to be released, and then lets compare which console has the most problems.
Sony is betting the farm on a lot of market untested technologies, Specifically Bluray. Bluray doesn't nearly have the 5+ years of refinement that DVD has had, and I can bet that looking at a bluray disk funny let alone getting fingerprints or a scratch on the disk will make it very susceptible to read failure. Meanwhile, Nintendo and Microsoft are using much more mature DVD tech, which will pay off with much less failure in the long run.
Speaking of Bluray, Yes 50GB is great, but show me a game that uses more than 8.5GB. The only one that comes to my mind is the Everquest series with every expansion they have. Even HL2 and Quake4/Doom III with their mind blowing graphics doesn't crack a single layer of a dual layer DVD, so my guess is that most of that storage will be used for "Sega CD" uses like audio and video, instead of just using the high powered graphics hardware to do the cut scenes for you. Simply put, the only reason they put Bluray in the PS3 is to stronghold the movie industry to make Bluray the High Dev Movie standard, and in doing so, Sony is risking the relibility of the hardware.
Nintendo wise, it looks like they went the path of refining the gamecube. The Cube's reliability is already pretty high. the only thing in question is the CD-ROM drive. Being a slot loader vs the old top loading design may be a problem, but knowing Nintendo they won't ship until the thing could survive warfare.
Microsoft biggest problem is it likes to use commodity parts for it's hardware. Yes it make it a lot cheaper but it also bites them because it's not designed to take console level abuse. The Detachable hard drive to me looks like a big failure point, especially if there's no active protection on these drives. The CD-Roms are probably a big failure point as well. I also believe that heat problems are going to plague them as well, but time will tell.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
We're taking components and cramming them in spaces with insufficient free air delivery and we're surprised when they crash and burn.
Consumer electronics should be designed to support consumer use, no?
A consumer should be able to use AV cabinet "A" and AV device "B" the way both were intended. If not, then one thing, the other, or both were poorly designed.
As a consumer, I would expect that any AV cabinet I buy is designed to accommodate or dissipate the heat from several devices consuming several amps each at 120 Volts. As a consumer, I would assume the X360 is designed to operate in reasonable temparture and humidity ranges, and also that it is designed to manage the BTUs it generates during operation. What exactly is wrong with this?
I've lost many hard drives and three computers (one Linux, one Mac and one Windows,) to "heat prostration".
I've owned and operated Macs, Wintel, and Linux boxen for almost 20 years, and I've run them on or under desks, and in closed, poorly ventilated "computer desk" cabinets. Not one has overheated, even the Mac that spent its entire 6 years as my main machine, in the closed cabinet, and had 3-4 HDDs at times.
Sometimes the cases are not really capable of handling everything we can shove in there.
Then why are we able to shove things in there? If there is a valid mounting position for something, the case designer should assume it's going to be used and design accordingly.
I hate the monolith in Redmond as much as the next guy but... heat is the enemy here.
I'm not specificly digging MS here, they just provided a context for the discussion. This is a fundemental design standard that all consumer products should meet, regardless of the product type or manufacturer.
Heat is not an enemy, it's a predictabe condition. In this case, MS could easily tell how many amps the box pulls, and could easily compute the BTUs it would be generating. From there it's a risk management question: What is an acceptable mean failure rate, and how hot can we let it operate before we exceed that rate?
I bet NOBODY who lives in a frozen food section at Safeway is reporting a crash.
And I bet NOBODY considers that a valid consumer electronics operting specification.
If overheating is the problem as a number of posts seem to suggest, then I can see why Microsoft waited to release XBox 360 in November. Expect the real wave of failures to start hitting about June of 2006.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IBM's PPC970 is known to produce vast quantities of heat, particularly with three cores. And ATI's modern GPUs are hot potatoes as well - particularly when you consider that the ATI GPU in the XBOX is also serving as the northbridge.
By all accounts, the system produces ~180W of heat while playing games. That's a lot to handle with only two 60mm fans.
Microsoft is not alone with this problem - the PS3 has an NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX derivitive that is clocked very high; it will produce at least 80W, and Cell will likely produce ~80W. More problematic for Sony is the fact that the current PS3 case has very few vent holes.
Make no mistake - heat is an issue that will be problematic for all next generation consoles. The days of 25W desktop CPUs are over, as are the days of 30W performance GPUs.
I'm just surprised that no one was smart enough to put a bloody Sempron in one of these consoles...
I have seen a few posts over at Xbox scene and elsewhere that are saying that the crashing is due to a bad power supply. The switched power supplies with other 360's, and the problems followed one particular power supply, and the system that had the problem at first worked fine with another power supply. I played for a few hours last night on both PGR and Perfect Dark, and had no problems what so ever. I will admit, though, that I am going to be saving on the heating bills this winter, as the box does spit out some really warm air.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
A defect caused by a poor design, and only in the early models. Sounds familiar! A moving part was made of plastic and it wore a groove down in it over time. This messed up the lens alignment as it wasn't hitting the disk at 90 degrees. Turning it upsidedown meant that that gravity did the same job as the plastic sled. You could fix it by filling the groove with glue or some other filler to level it off.
My main point: How many of the people with problems have the machine sitting on a carpet? I see this at friends places all the time. Most devices have vent holes on the bottom and passive ventilation is essential from bottom to top. If you place it on a carpet, you cover half of the vents and remove most of the airflow. If the xbox 360 is already a hot potato, this could even lead to a fire hazard. However, it should not be crashing. If it's overheating, the BIOS should notice and shutdown long before you start to get random glitches.
If you don't have a desk to put it on, put a hard-back book between it and the floor.
The beta version is significantly larger (30-40%) than the production version.
The PS2 has been plagued with reliability problems, both at launch and afterwards. It had similar heating issues and a lot of the same problems were reported. It's a mix of people not understanding that higher powered consoles are more sensitive to placement and heat ventilation, and the production issues that comes with first mass producing something.
All these same rumors were present at the Xbox launch. Units being returned in droves, DVDs being scratched by the disc player, and all other kinds of malarkey. It ended up being untrue and just a couple of problems being blown out of proportion, and this will as well.
I think there are more iPOD nanos having problems than there are 360s at the moment, but we're not jumping all over our sacred cow Apple, now are we?
Ok, so the designer should make what assumptions? Should he (or she, I'm an equal-opportunity blamer) assume that somebody will install 20gb drives in each hard drive position? How about 200gb? 400gb? Should they assume that each 5-1/4" drive bay will hold a CD-RW or a DVD+/-RW? How about a fanbus? Each of these peripherals have a different heat profile. The same type of components from different manufacturers also have different heat profiles.
Just because we're able to do something doesn't mean it's a good idea. The speedometer on an average car goes up to 120 MPH. Should the designer assume that the car will be in constant operation at 120 miles per hour? Every car has a first gear and it's entirely possible to drive around everywhere in first gear so should the designer accomodate that method of use? An automobile trunk can accomodate generally about 10 cubic feet of stuff. Should the designer assume that the user will be filling that 10 cubic feet with quick-set concrete? I mean, they've provided space for it, why sholdn't I fill it with concrete? Maybe because that's a totally fucking stupid idea? Hmmmm...that might be it.
There's a valid mounting position for something, you're absolutely right. Who says what something is? I think that multiple mounting positions exist so that you can flexibly install equipment according to your own best interests and the best interests of the hardware utilized. They don't exist so that you can cram in hard drives and CDRWs in every single available drive bay. A lot of computer chassis provide mounting holes that are used by some drives but not by others, and it's only for the purpose of flexibility.
The designer shouldn't have to protect the system from the user, it's the user responsibility (a concept often lost on most people these days. le sigh) to protect their hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if the manual for the 360 says not to cover the air vents and/or to leave a certain amount of space between the vents and anything that would restrict airflow.
I lost a 20gb IBM Deathstar drive one time, on my friggin' birthday. Since then, my hard drives have usually been installed in 5-1/4" drive bays with cooling fans in front of them, for the sake of their own longevity and reliability. I even use a heatpipe cooler on my drives these days, in addition to the fans.
Everyone having problems with your 360, try using a vertical orientation outside any sort of cabinet or enclosure (this includes the shelf your home theater stuff is on) and definitely don't set it on top of your heat-radiating 500+ watt receiver (or cd player, or whatever).
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
First, just because you don't see any symptoms, does not mean your equipment is not suffering from the excess heat. You could just be shortening the lifespan of your components without any current noticable clues.
Second, the problem with most consumer AV cabinets is that they are designed for form, not function. IOW, they are made to look pretty in your living room, not safely house your equipment. Sure, a DVD Player, cable box (non-DVR), cd player, and basic receiver will live just fine in one of these cabinets, but you start putting things that generate real heat in there, and you're asking for trouble!
To fix the heat issue in an AV cabinet, just cut a hole in the back of the cabinet, and stick a 30-40mm CPU fan over the hole. Did that in mine, and everything stays comfortably cool and stable!
The problem with some companies is that they will not even make a cursory attempt at discovery before commiting to a deadline. I'm currently observing this on my own job...
C - the footgun of programming languages
You have the makings of a successful IT manager.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Sony is betting the farm on a lot of market untested technologies, Specifically Bluray. Bluray doesn't nearly have the 5+ years of refinement that DVD has had, and I can bet that looking at a bluray disk funny let alone getting fingerprints or a scratch on the disk will make it very susceptible to read failure. Meanwhile, Nintendo and Microsoft are using much more mature DVD tech, which will pay off with much less failure in the long run.
First of all, Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) discs have become nigh-invulnerable due to a new coating. Supposedly you can literally take steel wool to the discs and not scratch them. Fingerprints also do not hold well on the new material, but even if they did generally they do not cause a problem for readers.
I would also note that DVD technology was still rather new when Sony put it in the PS2, not much further ahead of where the Blu-Ray players will be in six months or so.
Speaking of Bluray, Yes 50GB is great, but show me a game that uses more than 8.5GB.
As noted by another poster, there are a few already. However there is a good reason why you do not see more - because it costs a lot of money to add another disc! The package is more expensive, you double the burning cost, and of course it's a pain to switch discs and most game makers will do anything they can to fit on one disc.
With more space aviliable developers will naturally start using it. How? Don't forget the new consoles support HDR (high dynamic range) which means larger textures. Furthermore with more space you cna ease up on compression (assuming you were compressing some things like audio a lot just to conserve space and not processor power). You can have more FMV (yeah, I know it doesn't really add to a game but still) and more extras like "making of" videos (which are cool).
Now here's the problem facing Microsoft. Next year, game makers will start releasing games that make use of the space availiable on a Blu-Ray disc. Now what happens when a game maker wants to port that to the 360? They have to cram it in a smaller space which means either taking out some stuff or compressing the hell out of it. So shortly after the PS3 launch you will see some game comparisons for cross-platform games noting the 360 looks slightly worse and interpreting that to mean a less powerful system, when in fact all it might be is compression issues!
A console has to stand out for about fpur years, and so generally has some very advanaced technology in it. To use sort of "old" components is to invite system deprication after only a year or so. Just imagine the marketing leverage Sony will have by touting the PS3 as having the next generation of DVD playing in addition to a world-class console that can play the vast library of the PS2 and PS1. How can Microsoft really counter? My guess is they will release an HD-DVD version of the 360 shipping with Halo 3 (on HD-DVD) around the launch of the PS3, but that's going to anger a lot of people if they do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...can anyone tell us what the Comedy Manual Phrase is for Xbox 360?
i.e. the warning phrase that is repeated throughout the manual in a worrying but also amusing way.
For Xbox, it was something like "...or the Xbox may fall and injure a small child". (pretty good)
For Dreamcast, it was "...otherwise the Dreamcast may catch fire." (the original, and still the best)
What is it for Xbox 360? :)
Xbox team : "We need a crash mode for Gotham racing 3 just like Burn out 3"
developpers : "Are you serious about the crash mode?"
Xbox team : "Ya, put a crash mode in"
developpers : "huh, oh, ok!".
That's a weird experience you've had. My 360 (two days old now) has worked great, and my brothers (since last Friday, a Mt. Dew unit) has also. It's ridiculously loud and hot, but what can I do?
I agree the thing about having to log in two people to play two-players games is very very weird. It sure wouldn't work in a kiosk at the store! It does work once you do it though.
All in all, I'm very impressed. The Live integration is great.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Is it just me, or are there more people here on slashdot talking about this, than actual posts of the problems on all the sites combined.
Even following the links provided by the poster and visiting MS newsgroups, out of the posts, it looks like there are maybe 100 people at the most that have encountered a problem...
Out of the 'how many units', and this is the number of problems experienced to warrant a SlahDot trash thread?
This is a joke, right? Shall we compaire other product releases, take the iPod, iMac, or many HD units or Dell brands or whatever...
In comparison, this is a significantly small number of problems reported in comparision to the number of units that were purchased.
As a side note, my spouse works in the retail gaming industry, and they have had very little reported problems in comparison to the units they have sold.
For example, PS2s sold last week generate more customer calls and returns for errors and crashing on a percentange then they are seeing with the 360.
Weird uh, after so many years, you would think Sony would have the PS2 hardware problem worked out. (And you would not believe the percentage each store has seen with the PS2 where customers brought back units that literally caught on fire, well smoke at least.)
Get off your we hate everything MS does and think for yourself. Go research this yourself if you are considering one, listening to other slashdotters is 'not' a source for news.