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Suit Filed Over 'Halo 3 Incompatibility'
Via Kotaku, a story on the CourtHouseNews site is discussing a suit filed by a CA man against Microsoft over Halo 3. "Microsoft's highly touted "Halo 3" video game, made exclusively for its Xbox 360, causes the Xbox to freeze or crash, ruining the game, according to a federal class-action complaint ... Lead plaintiff Randy Nunez says he paid $59.99 for his game. He wants class certification and damages." Given the lack of widespread note of such crashes, it's going to be hard to prove this in court I think.
Circumcision is child abuse.
If that's really a repeating issue on his box, and folks aren't reporting similar experiences because you "can't return video games," then establishing a class is the way to make sure anyone with problems can jump on the bandwagon. It lowers the barrier to file suit, in the same way that corporations have had that barrier lowered, vis-a-vis bulk subpoena provisions in the DMCA.
The result of lowering the barrier to file is always that more people file.
This could turn grave for MS and Bungie very quickly, even if the problem is strictly Xbox360 hardware. If Halo 3 taxes that hardware to it's limits, and the CPU/GPU has cooling problems, it would cause exactly what the plaintiff describes.
Class action is every service provider's worst nightmare. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.
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Toro
I know it sounds ambiguous but upon reading the complaint it turns out it is indeed about having the game not run on a Xbox 360, and not a Xbox "1".
You just got troll'd!
It's pretty explicit in the complaint that the failing system is a Xbox 360. Maybe the people at Kotaku figured everybody reading the article would know that the guy was trying it on a 360, so they didn't explicitly state it in their summary.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"It's not our shitty Halo 3 game that is to blame but rather our utterly garbage 360 hardware"
Case dismissed...
I don't agree that Halo 3 is a halfass game at all, but it's time for game publishers and investors to wake up and realise you can't ship a buggy POS.
It doesn't happen with any other product that you can buy. If the car industry sold cars that had 3 out of the 4 seats missing and it only went half the speed advertised they would get legally hit so badly. Just because software is an abstract concept to grasp rather then a physical product doesn't mean you can rip the customer off on quality.
This just in. Stupid arrogant litigation-happy people play games too.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
The case is more compelling than a traditional "it doesn't work" case because it's the same company handling the hardware and the software--thus it is a defect in MS systems. The software is covered by consumer protection laws, regardless of the EULA (and the hardware may or not still be). So, if MS has a knowledge of errors in 1% of the cases, then they'll have to fix it/pay for it. Regardless of knowledge of errors, a court is going to look favorably on the plaintiff because it's like a Ford car dealer selling you brand new spinning rims, from Ford, that don't fit on your wheels as advertised and refusing to take them back. And they ARE saying "tough luck," because a car dealer will at least offer to see what caused the new part to fail, visually verify it, or charge a small restocking fee.
As to people talking about EULAs, they don't matter in this case. In general, EULAs are scare tactics that simply up the cost of arguing a case--they may or may not be valid in court. In this particular case, you cannot sell someone something that doesn't work--call it fraud, breach of contract, whatever. And you can't sign away that right, at least not in CA. The point of this case is probably to get access to MS testing records during discovery, which will prove whether the issue is known or not. Otherwise there's no way to verify problems beyond the one machine without insane costs. Alternatively, they could be seeking a process for return of the game (similar to a restocking fee). MS should consider that anyway, with a key deactivation, to undercut resells and provide relief for customers who have problems.
The article states: "Bungie LLC, which makes Halo, was acquired by Microsoft in May 1991."
Completely false, the company was founded in May 1991, but only acquired by Microsoft in 2000 for the original Halo. I'd take anything this article says with a complete grain of salt.