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?
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.
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?
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".
You won't be getting a dollar from me then. If this is a big hardware problem I feel bad for the developers who had to work long hours to get their product ready for launch date.
Com'on, this is a bad hoax against Micro$oft. The screenshots are not even blue!
Million Dollar Screenshot
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.
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.
Consider their "limited release numbers" early adoption beta testing. They got them out there into the real world without having to give the units away and now they are getting the feedback they need to add to the new "revisions" that will still be out before the PS3.
It's a good thing though, the *only* reason I could ever see purchasing an XBox with Live would be for racing online. Now that I can't do that I might as well wait for Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 w/o network play
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.
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
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.
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!
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 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?
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.
Ahh, but they can win...it's called proper project management.
Delays can and do occur, but to be years off target is inexcusible. Rushing a product to market to meet the project deadline is also inexcusible. Microsoft has way too much experience in software development to not be able to estimate how long a project will take. When projects are chronically late by significant anounts of time, your means of estimating time to complete projects needs to be re-examined.
Longhorn is estaimated to ship when, 2008 is it? This is several years behind schedule? (I don't know for certain.) Microsoft's project manager knew (or whould have known) what was going into the new OS and the developers should have been better prepared to provide a more reasonable estimate of the time needed to complete the project.
Of course, the MS Marketing Dept. may be setting timelines and not the engineering/R&D department....no shock there.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
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
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?
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'?
We salute you!
If this is a big hardware problem I feel bad for the developers who had to work long hours to get their product ready for launch date.
hmmm..
DANTE: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?
RANDALL: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed--casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. (notices Dante's confusion) All right, look--you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia--this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
RANDALL: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
DANTE: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer...(digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
RANDALL: Like when?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
DANTE: Whose house was it?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Dominick Bambino's.
RANDALL: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
DANTE: Based on personal politics.
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
RANDALL: No way!
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: (paying Dante for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this...(taps his heart) not his wallet.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
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.
It does seem to be a hardware problem - they crash screen look glitchy instead of the "clean" screen you get when the crash is OS related. Reminds me of and overheated GPU.
Now, i don't know if the headline is correct (the console is very unstable... but only for a bunch of people), but if true, it has the smell of a rushed product all over it. And i won't make any friends over this, but serves these people right. Yeah, you, the ones that couldn't wait a couple of months and pay 3x the price in order to buy a product before it has been properly reviewed. And i don't mean like Gamespot's "Oooh! It's the second coming of Christ"-kind of reviews.
Paying upfront for promises is bad buisness. Don't buy into the hype. It's only a console.
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?
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.
Dude, if I had an X-Box and it was working properly, why would I be answering polls on some "team X-Box" site??? I'd be spending every waking hour (outside of work) playing Call of Duty 2 or something.
Frankly, I'm stunned that their number isn't far closer to 100%.
The real number of X-Boxes with problems is something we won't know for a couple weeks yet. It could be everybody, it could be a handful of loudmouths (or Sony astroturfers) trying to turn their bad experience into the next big consumer "crisis", a la the iPod battery "issues." Let's not get ahead of ourselves. If they screwed up the launch, we'll have plenty of time for MS-bashing fun when the dust settles.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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
"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 information at some of the links indicates it might be a problem with the power supply brick - one poster had three 360s (his and two friends')... one had a very different (color, size, prong size) power cord. That power cord, whichever xbox it was plugged into, wouldn't have a problem.
Sounds like its likely a combination of out-of-spec power conditioning and overheating. The two can reinforce each other AND combine to contribute instability... parts that are hot are less likely to be tolerant to poor power conditioning, and parts that are experiencing power fluctuations tend to produce more heat on the surge cycles.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
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.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft astroturfers weren't deployed to say positive things at any web site where there might be........ anti-Microsoft... comm..... HEY, wait a doggone moment.
for Workgroups
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.
It's a games console... it's supposed to be in the living room. If the designers couldn't figure out that bit and left it with a flaw where it didn't work in a normal living room, they deserve to be shot.
well, the real number is closer to 0.0001%, but apparently a few people did take a second to go on the forums to brag about their working xbox360 which is why it's only 85%. Think it's Cartman syndrome: got a cool new toy = gotta brag about it.
The people who paid $300+ for a non-working xbox360 have nothing better to do than to bitch about it online so that's where the 15% came from.
Just the fact that it's only 15% means there's very, very few people with broken xbox360s because when shit breaks the first thing the internet community does is bitch about it 24/7. If there was truly a lot of busted xbox360s out there then this number would be 100%.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Oh, come on. We^WThey'd never dream of doing something so low.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.