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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.
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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?
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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.
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.
MS extended the warranty on the Xbox 360 for over a year, they repair these boxes without question or hesitation... if the problem was really THAT widespread one would think it'd be cheaper to do a recall or maybe fix the problems earlier in the consoles life when they could have started producing consoles that didn't come back in for repair.
I find the idea of Ms leaving the console business over this positively absurd given their current market position.
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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.
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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.