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Microsoft Evasive on 360 Hardware Changes
From all reports Microsoft has upgraded the Xbox 360 consoles coming from their factories, and modified the consoles heading back to consumers from service calls. The trouble is, they're having a hard time admitting it. The company has always maintained there aren't any excessive heat problems with their console, so admitting now that they've added extra heatsink capabilities would be ... somewhat embarrassing. Dean Takahashi at the San Jose Merc has an interview with Todd Holmdahl, the 'hardware guy' at Microsoft: "We're very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience. You look at the number of games they are buying, the number of accessories they are buying, the Live attach. They love the box. They continue to buy the box. That said, we take any customer issue very seriously. We continue to look into these things very deeply. You have seen we have made some changes to our customer service policy."
If the system has a heating problem don't buy it. MS has no obligation to inform anyone about their hardware design.
I am not sure why adding a heatsink would be embarrassing. If they find an issue, then they should fix it going forward.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
I must be missing something. Rev 1 of hardware goes out the door. Some people have issues with it. They have a fix. So when Rev 1 items go in for repair they put the fix in place (whether or not that's the reason it was sent in).
What am I missing here?
Many consoles go thru another revision, whether its hardware or software based. It's not really much of a news story there. Why does slashdot always try to make a bigger deal of things when it involved Microsoft?
This is just another fishing expedition masking as news here. Move along.
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If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
10,000 volt capacitor (triggered by Live Smack Talk interpretation device).
Instant set concrete foam spray (triggered by the pirate Windows install seismometer).
Mustard gas dispenser (triggered by the mod chip detection unit).
Flamethrower (triggered by the iPod spectrometer).
VHF location transponder tied to IRBM launch site (triggered by the GPL sens-o-matic).
Beep beep.
Microsoft is bleeding cash at a faster rate than the first Xbox at a similar point in time and worldwide sales are worse than the first Xbox at a similar point in time(now that the PR stunt of flooding the channel with a couple extra million 360s has run its course).
And now Microsoft has some 9 million or so 360s out there that are defective by design. They will continue to fail over and over again due to heat bending the motherboard and detaching the chips. It's not a matter of if, but when. If you have a 360, it will fail.
The 360 team was given clear orders when they started the follow up to the 5 billion dollar in red ink first Xbox, no more billions in losses. Those days are over, the luxury of just throwing billions at the console market are over. But right now the project is bleeding cash at a faster rate due to the poor sales and hardware defects. And they now have 9 million or so 360s out there that either need to be replaced entirely or have costly modifications to keep them alive.
The 360 will now never be able to even break even and start making back the billions it has cost so far, and of course never begin to make back the billions for the first console either.
It is now just a question of when the plug gets pulled. Does Microsoft want to spend the billions to to keep the 360 artificially alive in the market just to save face or pull the plug now and deal with the short term PR hit and move on to other markets.
I work in a tech support department for a manufacturer, and it's a tightrope to balance Sales desires versus Engineering's desires. Engineering wants to come out with a fix, but yet they want to keep a lid on the idea that they designed a defective product. Sales wants to hear there's a fix but then gets upset when distributors want to return hundreds of product. So, applying my experience to the observations of Microsoft, I'd say it's either a bug they can't reproduce, or a change mid-production for a bug that isn't going to happen a high percentage of the time on the original design.
For example, we had a problem with the open cell foam behind buttons for security panels that were installed in the upper-NorthEast areas of the US, and Canada. Water would get into the cell and freeze, and then subsequent freeze/thaw conditions killed the foam. We revised the design. There's no reason, however, for a Florida or Arizona distributor to return thousands of units for a "button upgrade", even though everyone wants the "latest and greatest". One other example is a "hypothetical" condition. You've got hundreds of products with "reported heat issues". You might think this is an issue, but when you look at the fact there are millions of units out, hundreds is nothing. Engineering on their own makes a heat design change, and you decide to implement it on returns cause the retrofit is cheap and practical. You're not going to recall millions of units that are currently working fine, and there are a couple hundred with REPORTED problems. I have a feeling if you look at other consumer devices stuck in entertainment centers, the number of overheating XBOX360s is on par for the industry.
He is talking about Xbox 360, right?
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
See? It's easy to say you did something without admitting any previous error!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Given the failure rate, don't you think 'brick' would be more appropriate than 'box'? ;)
I don't even like XBox.
You don't like The Box?
I hate The Box.
I loooooove The Box!
How could you not like The Box?
Who's The Box?
Who's The Box!
The Box is good.
One issue which is often overlooked is the way MSFT handles returned (broken) units. Instead of sending back a brand-new unit every time, they've got this pool of refurb units, which appear to be largely a pile of lemons, meaning that the moment someone hits a bad, new unit, chances are that s/he will receive refurb units which'll fail soon as well, for the simple fact that they're lemons with more defects than MSFT seems to be able to fix.
This would explain why a significant number of people have gone through 3-4 units before receiving one which doesn't give a RROD or such after a few weeks/months. It'd also indicate that the bottom line is more important to MSFT than good customer service.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
My 360 is over a year old and still works fine. I know around twenty people with 360's out of those tow have had the red lights of death problem. The first guy I know with the problem modded his xbox so I always questioned whether the problem was due to something he did when he opened up the box to begin with. The second called microsoft and had a replacement at his door in a little over a week round trip. Im sure there are plenty of legitimate users that have had overheating problems, but nearly every console generation has had at least one prominent problem. Remember the ps2 overheating and dead laser problems, it took a lawsuit to get Sony to fess up to that one. If MS is being responsive and fixing the issues whats the problem?
Yes, the box. Duh.
Seriously, though, if you work with a piece of hardware every hour of every day for years on end, you're going to take shortcuts. When I did product testing at Microsoft, we didn't say things like, "I'm getting a crash on this Xbox 360 Development Kit, a product of Microsoft Games and a wholly owned Trademark of Microsoft Corporation, All Rights Reserved." Hell, it would have added hours to our day!
Comment of the year
Most of this guy's responses are , "we don't comment on that". not "we CANT", specifically, "we don't".
- Aetheral Research -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA Hes talking about that kind of box.
Nice spin. You dizzy yet?
Actually, all we expect from any company is openness, and not lies. If you are selling a piece of shit, please let us know how bad it smells before we buy it. If you discover you have a problem with your hardware, fess up and do right by the people who spent their money on your stupid fucking product.
I'm not just talking about monopolies who abuse their market position to control the market in ways the government can't even dream about. I want ethical behavior from *all* corporations.
Not that we'll get it. In our current consumerist, corporate culture, ethics are a bother.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The problem is that they aren't admitting there are issues with the Xbox360. They're claiming there are no issues and installing "perfectly normal" hardware updates that, mysteriously, are directly related to these nonexistent issues. They're trying to do just enough to not get sued.
For comparison, there was a bug in an Intel CPU (the Pentium I believe) that rarely occurred and didn't actually cause problems for an average end user when it did. Intel claimed that the problem really wasn't that bad, but eventually consumers got really unhappy and Intel recalled the CPU's.
I think it's okay to admit a problem but claim it's not really a big deal.
Microsoft claims there is no problem, so they can't be responsible for the hardware failures occurring. And maybe they can fix just enough 360's to keep users from banding together and filing a class action lawsuit.
"Given the failure rate, don't you think 'brick' would be more appropriate than 'box'? ;)"
/..
Should've known better than to try a vagina joke on
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
I understood that the HD-DVD drive on the 360 was the one that got hacked, revealing the AACS keys that were posted on Digg & everywhere else. I wonder if they're fixing that in this release, so that they can blacklist those drives?
Sometimes sarcasm is indistinguishable from extreme positions on Slashdot.
I don't recommend you buy an XBox 360. In fact, I recommend against it.
That's because I own one. I bought it about two months ago.
I had read about the problems with overheating, the unit being loud, and it's fragility. But, I wanted to play a few games. So, I bought the console, Viva Pinta, and Gears Of War. It cost me well over $600.00. This was just after they announced that they would warranty the console for 1 year, rather than the pitiful and embarrassing 90 days that they would previously warrantee their hardware against defects.
I like both games, and the wireless controllers are really good, but the console hardware has problems.
I was very surprised and disappointed at just how loud and hot the console got. It's so loud that you either need to cover it inside of a cabinet or just put up with not being able to hear your own TV/speakers over the cooling fans.
Crashing is also a problem. I have to turn on the air cooler in my home before I start playing, or the console will crash. I learned this after it started getting warm this summer. I don't think I can ever recall a console crashing on me before Microsoft got into the business -- even the original XBox was trouble free for me.
I can't really do anything to fix the situation. But, I can warn you, potential buyer, to try the Wii instead. It's cheaper, stable, quiet, and now has just about as many quality games as XBox 360 has.
I'd really love to be wrong about the XBox 360, but you can't ignore the countless flood of legitimate complaints from owners.
But that doesn't mean consumers shouldn't be told that Microsoft has a problem, and does not acknowledge it. That way, we can make an informed decision to avoid the 360.
Covering something because it makes noise - nice.
Complaining that it overheats after covering it - stupid.
I have a dvr that makes a lot of noise, although it's white noise, so you don't really notice it when watching a show or movie.
I bought one for myself around March of 06. I bought two more as gifts for my siblings in December. One of those two has just been sent back but seems to be getting managed well. There may have been airflow issues with it, too.
Thanks for the warning.
Besides the Wii, I'd also suggest getting a PS3 as an option. Sony has been doing a lot of interesting updates to its BIOS (it now upconverts DVDs to HD quality if you are using an HDMI cable, it also can act as a media client attaching streaming music, video or pictures from a DLNA server), and the graphics are on par with the 360 (if thats important to you). There are also a number of fun exclusives due out in the next month or two Lair, Ninja Gaiden Sigma (although arguably a remake), Stranglehold, Warhawk, Heavenly Sword. There are also a number of fun party and puzzle games that you can download on the PlayStation Network's Store, such as Calling All Cars, Go! Puzzle (three very addictive puzzle games), and Blast Factor.
Yes, MS seems to have a better online system right now, but I think Sony will catch up pretty fast (they've already added a lot of features to the PS3 since launch, and they don't seem to be stopping/slowing down). I'd rather have a system that is stable, and needs some work in the software department than a system that might have better software (right now), but is unstable (or keeps crashing).
For the record, I have my PS3 sitting in a very "open" space (in a stand under the TV that is open on all sides so air can circulate), but my home isn't air conditioned, so the living room sometimes gets in the 80s-90s. So far my PS3 has been just fine and hasn't overheat (though I don't plan to leave it on folding during the summertime). It seems that one place the PS3 certainly has the 360 beat is environmental tolerances.
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