Microsoft Sued Over Fall Update Issues

Gamespot is reporting that a rumour that's been floating around has, for once, turned out to be true. Microsoft has been sued for breach of contract and negligence in connection to the Xbox Live Fall Update. From the article: " Stating that the affected consumers number in 'at least the thousands,' the suit contends that Microsoft is refusing to repair or replace the broken systems unless the users pay 'up to $140' to ship it back to the company. The plaintiff is demanding that Microsoft pay at least $5 million in damages for breach of contract to those affected by the Fall Update problems, and an additional amount of at least $5 million in damages for an unfair or deceptive act under the CPA. Should Microsoft argue that it had no agreement to breach with the affected users, then the plaintiff contends Microsoft was negligent, and should be made to pay at least $5 million in damages." It should be noted that Microsoft has responded by saying it has offered to completely cover the cost of systems affected by the update, including shipping.

Comments

Only modders?

[cbhacking]

From what I read of the article (the link in the summary, but not the links from there) this looks like an issue that only affected those with modded XBox 360s, and MS released a fixed patch the next day. While I hope they will fix (for free) any system that was permanently bricked by this, I'm not even sure they are under contract obligation to fix a modded XBox (for free, at least). Making them pay $5-10 million for a patch that messes up the systems of those who have already voided their warranty might be valid, but if MS is indeed offering to fix them for free, including shipping, this guy doens't have a leg to stand on and I hope he gets laughed out of court.

Cost cutting a little out of control?

[PingSpike]

I played the xbox360 at my bother in law's over the thanksgiving holiday. I was pretty impressed with the graphical power and gears of war is the first shooter I didn't feel clumsy with when playing with a controller. But the system has eaten his oblivion disk twice (he had a store wipe it once) as well as leaving circular scratches on his call of duty 3 disk that prevent several midgame levels from loading.

Microsoft claims that the machine cannot be moved while on with a disk in it or it will do this to the disks. He claims he didn't move it. My feeling is there's no excuse for the machine doing that regardless. Skipping, rebooting midgame, hell even erasing your saved games...are all understandable or acceptable. But, a machine that destroys your $60 game disks, that can't be easily backed up, because you bumped into the entertainment center is unacceptable IMO. Its definately not a terrible machine power wise, but what did they save? $3 or something putting the piece of junk dvd player in the machine?

And then you have the reports of updates bricking the consoles and it doesn't really instill a lot of confidence in the system. And what is with the 90 day warentees? As I understand it this is becoming industry standard for consoles. I know the console market is pretty competitive, but even PC parts which are often installed by people with limited expertise and are very price competitive still all offer a 1 year warentee at least. I guess when you're selling systems at a loss the urge to cut costs wherever you can is pretty strong. But as a consumer, when I see the company not even willing to stand behind the product for a year I start to think there's something fishy going on.