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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.
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.
The old XBox didn't make any money either - however the long term tactic of Microsoft is to break into the market even if it means losing money. Granted it was supposed to happen with this console but I'm sure they have to money to ride it out.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
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.