MS Responds To 360 Glitches

Chris_Yates writes "Microsoft has responded to the complaints of angry gamers popping up on the internet. As expected, they claim it is a very small percentage of Xbox 360 owners that are experiencing a problem. The main question remains, though, what kind of support will those unfortunate few receive? Molly O'Donnell says, 'It's unfortunate and it's important that we get working consoles for those few people who are having problems. We want to get them playing and happy and buying games!' An ABC article states: 'They'll be playing again in three to five days...'"

Comments

Powersupply Cooling Problem

[Winterblink]

There was a fellow on the XBox360 forums who posted this link to a Gamespot forum post about a guy fixing his problems by getting his powersupply brick off the ground. Could this problem be due to poor cooling of that brick?

Most people probably heeded Microsoft's advice after people scoffed at the size of the thing - put it back behind your sofa or TV. But it could be that the lack of proper ventilation is causing this problem, which doesn't seem to be as "isolated" as Microsoft is saying. From what I've been reading on various forums around the net it's a higher percentage than one would expect.

Re:Powersupply Cooling Problem

[Paul Slocum]

Some of the forums like this one have posts from people who have spoken to MS tech support, and xbox support said the incidents are much higher than expected and replacements won't be available until at least January. They also confirmed that most problems are due to overheating.

Bullshit free summaries, please

[EvilDonut]

The main question remains, though, what kind of support will those unfortunate few receive? Molly O'Donnell says, 'It's unfortunate and it's important that we get working consoles for those few people who are having problems. We want to get them playing and happy and buying games!'

Actually no, the main question does not remain. It gets a straight answer: Those few who have problems with their Xbox will get a new one. It's pretty simple really.

Why is FUD like this allowed to get through?

Re:Bullshit free summaries, please

[defkkon]

Amen.

I bought mine at launch, and it works great. The power supply is cool, and the air out the back of the console is warm at most. The fans will sometimes sound like the thing is going to start flying, but what do you expect?

I have two friends who bought them, and they're working great as well.

I've been reading a lot at the Xbox.com Forums, and people are doing some pretty stupid things. They're placing the console on the carpet, with the power brick right behind it. They're enclosing it in a tiny hutch, again with the power brick. One person had stacked it on top of their reciever, which we all know gets pretty warm.

One guy even complained that their DVD door was broken - and later realized they hadn't removed the plastic sticker that protects the shiny door.

Honestly people, what's the big damned deal? Slashdot did the same thing with the stupid edge button problem the PSP had. Stories galore.

Re:Bullshit free summaries, please

[NeMon'ess]

Although MS gave the 360 a small form factor for more versatile placement, you could still give it extra room to let it breath. If your big-screen TV recommended placing it a few inches from the wall for ventilation would you ignore that too? Even some PS1s and PS2s had overheating problems. I've witnessed PS1s that would skip during video playback from heat but play smoothly after placing books under two edges so the middle was more exposed. You simply can't expect anymore to cram 5 to 10 times as much computing power into the same size space and not have heat issues if care isn't taken to it's placement.

Re:Bullshit free summaries, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the comment, is that NONE of the "stupid" usage patterns described by the poster I replied to are in any way unusual, unexpected, or out of the ordinary. In fact, they can all be described as typical.

Perhaps if the 360 had shipped with a cryogenic chamber for the power unit, consumers would have expected that there might be a heating problem. How would a consumer guess that we had just entered the age where technology and room temperature could not co-exist? BTW, have you seen any of the "fixes" that are suggested for this "next era of technology"? They include such technological breakthroughs as "suspend the power supply from a string" or "balance the unit on the corners of an open box". It must be something being at the forefront of this brave new world. Please send us luddites a post card when you have the time.

I love your point of view though "Hey, of COURSE it's fucked up. Hell, it's the NEXT GENERATION for gods sake. What did you expect, a FUNCTIONING machine for $500."

Lots of companies look forward to selling their Beta technology to people just like you, in fact they count on it. You are what is known as an "early adopter" to marketing departments, a sucker to everyone else. Top dollar, for an unfinished product. It's the magic 5% of the population. Hell, why would a company pay some chinese semi-slave a quarter to test the units, when they get fools like you to pay them $500 to do it for them?

But your friends probably think your pretty cool. Well, probably not, but I'm sure the marketing campaign has you believing it.

Re:Varying power supplies

[Generic Guy]

The most important reason why I avoid any Microsoft-products when possible is that whenever there are problems, it's never Microsoft's fault.
And instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft (plus fanboys) start to play the blame-game and fingerpointing.

As the original poster (OP), I'm certainly no MS fanboy. This early Xbox-2 or 260 or 360 or 480 or whatever it is hasn't garnered much interest for me, except for some amusement factor at the release problems.
However, a PSU problem while stupid and frustrating for early adopters it doesn't necessarily take away from the actual 360 design. In fact, the external PSU in this case may be a boon for MS, because its much easier to replace than taking the entire console apart.

Maybe some PSU supplier screwed up, however it's Microsoft's oblitgation to do the quality-control of the end-product, so they should have never shipped these units.

True enough, and this is an indication that MS was more worried about pushing these out to the market as fast as possible rather than QA. I hardly think Microsoft wants a looming PR nightmare for a flagship product(especially right before the holiday shopping season), but I can totally see their endemic lack of quality assurance rearing its ugly head.
IN contrast, Nintendo has historically been a bastion of good quality, where they _never want a customer to have a bad out-of-box experience with their products.

It certainly shows the difference between the two competitors.

As for the dust -by -summer issue, well it is interesting to note that the Xbox360 only has a 90-day warranty which will be expired on these early units by then.