XBox 360: crash reports
p2p news / p2pnet: With Christmas sales just around the corner, the last thing Bill and the Boyz need is reports of trouble with their new XBox 360 games console. But that’s what they’re getting. And at up to $400 (plus taxes, plus the cost of the games) a throw, it’s very bad news.
Yesterday, "Jsgongwon, one of our forum members, reported that his newly bought Xbox 360 keeps crashing while playing Project Gotham Racing 3 in single player mode," said Xbox-Scene.
"He’s playing with the default settings, and apparently his Xbox crashes even before the end of the first lap. Crashes on Xbox Live and on startup occur too. He included screenshots of the crashed Xbox 360 (see below – more pictures on flickr.com) and a video of the crash here (2MB XviD).
"A quick look on our forums (more, more and more) seems to indicate he’s not the only one. Several of our members seems to get crashing 360s. It doesn’t seem to be related to a specific game, as we get reports of the Xbox 360 crashing with several games. And it’s not all the same Error-number either (E79, E74, E64, real crashes, …).
"I quickly checked over at TeamXbox and they also have a large thread and poll about defective Xbox 360s."
Is it for real? It is.
"Microsoft Corp on Wednesday said some Xbox 360 owners are reporting problems with the new video game console that debuted in North America earlier this week," says Reuters. ‘We have received a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected,’ Microsoft spokeswoman Molly O’Donnell told Reuters in a telephone interview."
O’Donnell declined to say how many reports the company had received, but said the calls represented a ‘very, very small fraction’ of units sold. And, "The number of calls was not unexpected, she said."
However, " While the problem certainly doesn’t look massive, new reports are still coming in on this thread (and more accross our Xbox 360 section or on other forums like teamxbox.com)," states Xbox-Scene.
"It’s of course not possible for us to verify all these reports, but some people certainly have real problems with their 360.
"While not representative (for the simple reason that people who have problems are more likely to vote/post/shout than people who don’t have problems), the poll on the teamxbox forums suggests ~15% of the Xbox 360 owners have problems (on +400 total votes). The real % is probably lower, but it’s hard to say how many exactly atm."
Also read:-
Xbox-Scene – Xbox 360 Crashing Like Mad?, November 23, 2005
Reuters – Some Xbox 360 buyers reporting problems, November 23, 2005
Xbox-Scene – Microsoft Answers on Xbox 360 Issues: Isolated Problems, November 24, 2005
November 24th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
So are people going to file a class action lawsuit like they are trying on Apple for the iPod nano? I mean, this is obviously quite a wide spread fault and definately hasn’t been tested properly or they would have spotted it. They are sending out defective products and people are getting very disappointed. I’d sue to get my money back and time wasted playing with another crashing OS.
November 24th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
I think it’s worth noting that a large % of the sold xboxes have gone straight to a closet to wait for Christmas eve. So while MS is claiming only a small percentage of sold XBOXes have problems, i expect come Christmas day we’re going to see a rather large % of unhappy children/parents. Also, if they where expecting the number of calls they are getting, why are the hold times on 1-800-4MY-XBOX so long?
I hope Santa has a quick way to return/exchange Xboxes.
November 24th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
HERE WE GO AGAIN…
Remember when Xbox came out?
Same BS. “Reports” of overheating, etc. I even had the schmuck from Best Buy tell me that I shouldn’t buy it because of that problem.
Oh, and the crashes, of course the Xbox crashed again and again.
Problem with those reports? THEY WERE FALSE. With ANY release of a new gaming platform, there will be reports of overheating, bad pixels, crashes, etc… You do NOT hear the vast majority of satisfied consumers, simply the tiny amount of malcontents who *may* have a defective unit. Or more sinister are those who post false reports.
ALL gaming platforms have proven over time that, when treated properly, last years and years and years. Cripes, we can still find working intellivisions!
November 24th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
I love it. this reminds me of when I worked at a call center for MSN internet access and Microsofts computers screwed up and started charging their customers hundreds of dollars from their credit and debit cards instead of the 21.95 they were supposed to. thousand of people bounced checks, were stranded while traveling, etc… bet no one heard about that.
November 24th, 2005 at 9:51 pm
So you’re saying my first Playstation’s laser failure, and it eating discs and my second one’s recent drive failure and the bad pixels on my first PSP and the power cord problem and all those save glitches with my Xbox were all an illusion. D**n. all that dealing with customer service for nothing! (<G>)BTW, I’m a 45 year old with a working Atari Super Pong-I treat my equipment very well, but Playstations and Xboxs break all the time. I don’t expect either the new Xbox or Playstation to be any different from my previous experience. I do expect the Nintendo Revolution to work, because none of my previous Nintendos have ever broken. But that was probably dumb luck.
November 24th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
I suspect that most don’t know yet of this problem. The staged release time was purposely choosen to get the most responce from the market. It was released right before Christmas, so that it would be on the market for momma and poppa to buy for Little Johnny. Only as one poster mentioned, Little Johnnys’ present is still hidden in that wonderful place that magically releases its contents to the Christmas tree at the proper time. Wait a few days after Christmas to get a better picture of the problem.
For the price of this video gaming machine, it should preform flawlessly. They have had enough time to test it to death. The idea that anyone, much less a bunch of folks are reporting this indicates that the product has serious flaws that should not be there for a well tested product. Since this was a big corporate venture, you can bet this flaw was known ahead of time. It was released anyway with the idea of we will fix it later. A method now well known to exist within corporate mentality as someone’s head was on the block.
The shame of it will be Little Jonny when he plays with his brand new toy and finds out it doesn’t live up to its billing. Other corporations have that image problem of not living up to expectations too. Think RIAA, MPAA, BSA and all the others of the alphabet soup.
November 25th, 2005 at 2:14 am
so of course it will crash a lot…
JUST LIKE WINDOWS! XD
November 25th, 2005 at 5:32 am
there are like 22 versions of the current xbox.
i mean, it may be hard to design and produce this type of product, but put proper testing into it before you gouge people for a busted product.
November 25th, 2005 at 7:44 am
Nothing complex is perfect. Mistakes in production occure always have always will. What will define this episode isn’t the fact that there is problems, but on how Microsoft deals with the claims. If Microsoft starts to refuse warrenty claims then they will start to have problems. The whole issue with Apple was initally they were refusing to replace the units because they claimed the flaw was from user abuse and no longer under warrenty.
The problem with the Apple Nano was a matter of bad design in general. Just because an Xbox flakes doesnt mean that the over all design is flawed. Most likely it needs some improvement, but no more then is usually seen in a standard development cycle.
November 27th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Actually, there are 7 minor revisions to the circuit board. I have a version 1.0 and it works like a charm. The revisions were to deter modchips.