Xbox 360 Launches In Europe

The Xbox 360 has launched in Europe, to similarly high demand as in the U.S. The BBC has details on the long lines and consumer reaction, and Next Generation has some information from Microsoft on how the launch is going. From the BBC article: "The technology giant has been forced to defend itself against accusations it has failed to provide enough consoles ahead of Christmas. Some 300,000 Xbox 360s are likely to be available for Friday's European launch, though demand is expected to far exceed this."

Comments

Two complaints

[KDR_11k]

I'm not going to complain about shortages, I had enough opportunity to buy a core version today and didn't (and now I feel like an idiot because I could have made a big profit on eBay but whatever). What annoys me, though:

1. The demo kiosks have no games on them. Not a single one. All you can do is watch trailers (using faked footage, the kind they showed at E3, kinda ironic that they call the games section "the best games ever with movie-quality graphics") for a variety of racing and sports games. They could have put a 50 Euro DVD player in there and done the same.

2. The (non-MS) games cost 68 Euros a piece. As if 60 Euros for a console game wasn't enough of a ripoff, now they're increasing prices again! I was so tempted to put a few copies of the PC versions of those games on the same shelf so everyone who just bought the system can see they're paying 50% more than a PC user for identical or inferior (no mod support) versions. I mean, PC games are more complex and harder to test, yet they're selling for 40-45 Euros while console games cost 60 across the board so it can't be dev costs. Manufacturer royalties were less than 10$ a copy from what I heard so it would explain 55 Euros at best.

Re:CD scratching appears to be the most common def

[Red Flayer]

" If you bought a turd in a box, the layer of said turd doesn't owe you anything."

Not true -- if you purchase a turd, you expect there to be a turd inside the box. And if there is not, you go to the seller to get a turd replacement. And if you used that turd as compost, just like the instructions said, and it killed all your plants instead of feeding them -- well, then, whoever sold you that turd and told you it was a nutritious compost supplement owes you some more plants.

This is not a "wouldn't it be nice if..." this is the way the law works in the US.

Re:So?

[oGMo]

You're correct, the 360 is built to STAND in either orientation. The unit isn't designed to MOVE while playing a game. It isn't build to withstand some dumbass showing his friends how cool it is that the green light changes its location when he rotates the unit around.

Hey, I'm not talking how it's currently designed. That's pretty much a given: you move it, it destroys your games.

I'm talking about how, if Microsoft had a hair of forethought, they would have done what every successful console manufacturer has done, and design a console to withstand "normal" abuse. I'm not talking about dropping it off a table, but the reality is, kids are going to have this thing on the floor, the power supply is going to be on the floor, it's going to get pushed around and manipulated while in play.

It doesn't matter what they write in the manual in big red letters. Hell, most of the time, what they write in there comes down to "YOU MUST NOT EVER USE THIS FOR ANY PURPOSE AND IF YOU DO AND IT BURNS DOWN YOUR HOUSE, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT". People don't pay attention to that. People expect their console to be an appliance, not a highly sensitive PC that must be treated with the utmost care lest it destroy your media or overheat. (This is another reason Nintendo stuck with cartridges, despite it ultimately being a poor choice.)

The manual tells you not to it. Common sense tells you not to it. Physics tells you not to it. Don't do it, and you won't fuck up your game disc. Crying about how much of a dumbass you are isn't going to help.

The manual tells you not to do a lot of things. Common sense tells me this should withstand a reasonable amount of abuse. Physics? Most people don't know how fast the disc spins on their blackbox console, they just know they put in the shiny CD and the game plays. After all, your portable cd player never had any trouble!

This comes down to simply not being appropriate for the intended audience. You can build a car and write all sorts of things in the manual, but if you constantly have to monitor the gauges and be sure not to turn too fast, it's going to break. Not because the driver was stupid, because the designer was stupid.

The PS2 doesn't spin the disc very fast. If you change orientation fast enough while the disc is spinning you will scratch the disc in the drive. People have done it, and they have complained about it just like these dumbasses.

I have done it, and I haven't had any problems. Sure, I didn't shake it as hard as I could, and I treat my PS2s with hard drives a bit more carefully, but I haven't ruined any games because of it. I have two first-gen PS2s, and they still run fine, despite normal day-to-day wear and tear. There are no massive complaint threads about ruined games. (Disc Read Errors, yes, but Sony fixed that, too.)