360 gets $100 price cut, in a way

If you buy both systems and the tard pack.

Looking to top Sony's stupid pricing, MS somehow does with this nonsensical bit, cutting $20, $30 and $50 off the tard, Elite and Premium systems, respectively.

In a way, it shows arrogance, but with Halo 3 coming in in less than two months, they can afford to. MS is just biding their time and raking in as much money as they can until the 360 returns from it's post-Halo 3 sales to its regular, average half-Wii sales.

Who knows when the 65nm/HDMI/functional? systems will be out? I'm hoping before Halo 3.

Bach says: We got a better design

I say: O rly?

Speaking to investors after having sold quite a bit of stock and dealt with a flurry of bad news, Bach was quick to point out that they've got things under wraps, really.

Speaking to investors, Microsoft's president of the Entertainment and Devices division, Robbie Bach, has indicated that the 360 has a new design that sidesteps the infamous 'Red Ring of Death' problem.

"It's a design challenge that we've had to work around and create a new design to solve that problem, and for the interaction of a variety of different components. And so that's a Microsoft design question, not some component manufacturer's problem or our manufacturing partner's problems. It's something we've had to work on. We know we have a much better design in the market now. We verified that."

I don't have anything to say to that, so I'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

Remember the last guy in the news who kept saying everything was fine when it wasn't?





Coincidence? You decide.

Newsflash: DVD too small

Also, water is wet.

For night racing, please insert disc 2.

According to a a staff who is believed to be on the developing over at the official Project Gotham 4 Racing forums, they are having problems Fitting all the data of the tracks which was unveiled at today into the game.

He writes: "You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD. So we've worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city. For example, Macau is always in the daytime, but if you play it during a storm everything looks darker and more foreboding. If you play during a blizzard then things are slightly tinged blue and everything seems more frozen. Of course, playing this track in sunshine will make everything appear bright and yellowy."

It's just common sense that it's too small. It was near capacity last-gen with RalliSport Challenge 2 taking up a whopping 6.4GB and the Xbox 360's DVD9 disc has 7.05GB (after security) of available space, which isn't all that much. Say what you will about Blu-ray, but it's got 50GB of space, which by my count is a lot more and with technology, more (not moore) is always better.

Evil Rears it's Ugly Head Once Again

Four pages of nonsense, enjoy.

Blah, blah, blah. The system's still defective, you're still a piece of shit, your customers are still good at taking shit, and so on and so forth.

...BIZ: It's a bit ironic, because when MS first got into the console business, critics laughed because MS is a software company at its core. It's not in the business of creating hardware. Now the company has discovered some faulty design in its 360 hardware, seemingly proving the critics right. What do you say to those critics?

PM: Those critics need to do their homework and look at some of the hardware product failures that this industry has seen in the past 30 years that maybe have not got as much publicity...

Here's a history lesson for you; I bought and Xbox in 2001, IT STILL WORKS TODAY. No one will say the same about the 360, it's disposable.

The 360 is ass-backwards, it lacks a standard HDD, it's unreliable, it's cheaply made and no matter how much duct tape and patches are thrown at it, it's still garbage. What good are games if the system breaks so much that you can't even play them?

When the 360 fails, you know who to blame. Microsoft and Microsoft alone are at fault for all the faults within the system, truly the most brilliant minds in the world are the ones who lack the most common sense. The PS3 is reliable and customers won't keep taking shit forever and will pay the little bit extra for the convenience of not having to going a MONTH without their system WHEN it breaks down again.

MS is just lucky that their customers are braindead tools and the June 07 NPD sales just solidify that:

Top SKU's June 2007
01. Wii Mario Party 8 -- 426.k
02. Wii Play w/ remote -- 291.2k
03. NDS Pokemon Diamond Version -- 288.4k
04. NDS Pokemon Pearl Version -- 214.7k
05. 360 Forza Motorsport 2 -- 197.40k
06. PS2 Guitar Hero 2 w/ Guitar -- 197.35k
07. 360 Guitar Hero 2 w/ guitar -- 177.6k
08. Wii Pokemon Battle -- 157.9k
09. Wii Resident Evil 4
10. 360 The Darkness
11. PS2 Naruto Ultimate Ninja 2
12. PS2 Transformers: the Game
13. 360 Tenchu Z
14. NDS New Super Mario Bros
15. PS2 Tomb Raider: Anniversary
16. Wii Super Paper Mario
17. 360 Transformers: The Game
18. PS2 MLB '07: The Show
19. Wii Big Brain Academy: Wii
20. 360 Dirt

Tenchu Z outsells DiRT, wtf?

XBLA users aren't that bright either:
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 Bomberman LIVE
2 Sonic The Hedgehog
3 Golden Axe
4 Texas Hold 'em
5 Yie Ar Kung-Fu
6 UNO
7 Worms
8 Double Dragon
9 TMNT 1989 Arcade
10 Carcassonne

Dear all 360 owners, stop wasting money on CRAP you won't touch after a week, donate it and feed a starving child, not a hungry publisher.

Six Reasons The Xbox 360 Is in Trouble

GamePro states the obvious.

The number one reason is:
1. It's unreliable. As Microsoft finally acknowledged this month, Xbox 360s fail more often than the company "is comfortable with." Some reports pin the "Red Ring of Death" failure rates as high as 33%. As a result, Microsoft increased the system's warranty from one to three years at a sizable and appreciated expense, but the company's unwillingness to fully disclose what's causing the problem undermines the solution. Gamers don't want to risk $300-400 at the chance to play games on 360, they want to make sure it can and will play games for years to come. Pile on the recent class-action lawsuits claiming that the machine scratches discs at random, and it becomes clear that the Xbox 360 isn't nearly as dependable as it could be.

If only 360 owners had more brains than money, something might actually get done instead of buying fucking pictures on Live and defending a defective product.

Peter Moore is GONE

Wow.

He left to EA (Sports) and MS got some EA guy (Don Mattrick) to take his place. After ruining Sega and MS, there's finally someone able to take down EA from the inside.

I feel sorry for the EA guy taking his place, that's like being handed some paper towels and duct tape as Peter Moore takes the last lifeboat off the sinking Titanic.

There's a sort of emptyness now that fills this blog, the curse of Moore is lifted, but things still break, leaving just dust and echoes...






... and a lot of red rings.

Bach Bails Out

Robbie Bach Bails Out!

"Regulatory filings indicate that Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, has sold $6.2 million worth of company stock since May, a period during which mounting Xbox 360 technical problems have come to light..."

Wow, the bad news just keeps on mounting for Microsoft. I don't blame him, the shit's about to hit the fan and he put on some goggles. Then again, the goggles do nothing.

Sony won E3

Killzone 2 (stole the show)
Uncharted\
Infamous
Heavenly Sword
Haze
UT3 (mouse/keyboard,mods!)
LittleBigPlanet
GT5
Folklore
Ratchet
Echochrome (an interactive optical illusion, fuck yeah!)
SOCOM
Warhawk
Home
Free online
MGS4!

MS just continues to show they don't know their market. They're trying to increase marketshare that's already gone to the Wii for casual gaming, but they're alienating their current marketshare, which will head to the PS3. Aside from Halo 3 and Bioshock, who cares anymore? I'm sick of dealing with broken systems, cheaped, gimped hardware, paying for pictures, paying for P2P online, a locked down system, I just don't care anymore.

Sony shows they care more about gaming by what they've shown. As a gamer, that's the most interesting and most enticing. Being able to play games in the best way possible, without silly things like mouse/keyboard lockouts, restriction of mods, lack of a standard HDD, smaller disc space.

Kudos Sony, you deserved to win.

Class Action Lawsuit Launched Against 360

A lawsuit regarding another issue, disc scratching has been launched

One of the many issues regarding the 360; disc scratching is fairly prevalent, although not as seemingly widespread as the infamous red rings.

According to numerous reports I've read on Xbox-Scene, this is caused because some felt was not applied to the inside of the tray itself. The felt would have allowed a cushion for the disc as well as elevating it in order to prevent scratches. This is some felt that's a fraction of cent to mass produce and would have easily prevented all this.

*sigh* Come on MS, this is just sad. The Xbox I knew and loved is long gone, as are Ed Fries and Seamus Blackley, among others. It's a shame to see the Xbox name tarnished for no reason other than one of the richest companies in the world being cheapskates.

N'Gai Croal says Recall the 360!

N'Gai Croal says recall the 360!

The Newsweek Level Up man with the dreads has lambasted MS for the 360's faults.

"...Again, if Bach is correct and this is problem is truly design-related rather than manufacturing-related, and Microsoft still can't or won't be more forthcoming, then it should either institute a general product recall, or offer to completely replace any Xbox 360 whose model numbers come from those batches with this design flaw.

We say this for three reasons. First, it took Microsoft months to acknowledge the scope of the problem, long after afflicted Xbox 360 owners were already complaining loudly, attempting to identify the issue, and desperately inventing homegrown remedies. So to finally have Microsoft admit that, yes, there is a problem, is much like a wife who's found lipstick on her husband's collar; strange numbers in his mobile phone; and unspecified charges on his credit card. When he finally admits that, yes, he has been cheating, she's going to feel relieved that, thank god, she isn't crazy. But to simply have that acknowledged, accompanied by a bouquet of flowers, some chocolates and a promise never to stray again, is unlikely to restore said wife's trust. Microsoft needs to issue a full and frank accounting of what took place rather than the modified limited hangout wrapped in an extravagant display of remorse that we've seen thus far.

The system is defective. The time has long passed and before Halo 3 hits, MS must do something more than apply a giant band-aid to cover a gaping wound. It's infected, festering and about to mutate into something horrid.

It's a system that costs just $6 to manufacture, it was rushed out in 2005 and they just cut too many costs to try and make a profit. MS cheaps out, we pay and now they have to pay. You'd think we could go one console generation without having one turd of a system.

Why the 360 failed (I could've told you that)

The 360 failed because it's cheap, no shit Sherlock

"Asian Xbox 360 manufacturers are blaming poor console design, cheap components and a lack of testing coupled with a manic obsession by Microsoft to beat Sony as the reasons for the Xbox 360 "Red Ring Of Death" problems."

Wow, a system rushed out of the gate in 2005 with a tard pack, cheap components, $6 manufacturing cost, a jet engine inside it and cheap plastic on the outside isn't the best piece of hardware out there? I'm not surprised. The Xbox was a surprisingly stable piece of hardware last-gen, but then again, they had a lot to prove. The people in charge of the first Xbox were a lot smarter and more idealistic. They didn't want it to be like the PS2, something that kept breaking down and was unreliable.

So when MS wanted to try and win this generation, they copied the PS2 to a T. I guess they missed the memo where it said they shouldn't have copied the shitty hardware. Oh well, let MS do what they always do, ignore, deny and patch, patch, patch!

3 year warranty for 3 red rings doesn't make 360 more reliable

Well, the 360's been out for almost two years. It's unreliable, loud, clunky and cheaply made. Y'know, things break still applies just as much now as it did in 2005. So what does MS do? Well, they're patching hardware by adding a new GPU heatsink and extended the warranty! You can smell that pungent aroma from a looming class-action lawsuit permeating the internet...

That's right, because 360's are continuing to break down and MS is overwhelmed with dead systems, they're extending the warranty. The warranty which used to be 90 days, which was extended to 1 year, has now been extended to 3 years. So at least you're covered when the system breaks again.

Now, this sounds fine and all, but there's still the whole process of sending a dead system and receiving a working system. Today, I just got my system back, 31 days after I had sent it in! So if you don't mind waiting a month with no system, while you wait for MS to repair it, then you're golden.

Warranty Update Information
An Open Letter from Petey Moore

An Open Letter From Peter Moore

An Open Letter From PeteyMooreproblems

"To our Xbox Community:

You've spoken, and we’ve heard you. Good service and a good customer experience are areas of the business that we care deeply about. And frankly, we've not been doing a good enough job.

Some of you have expressed frustration with the customer experiences you have had with Xbox 360; frustration with having to return your console for service after receiving the general hardware error message on the console.

The majority of customers who own Xbox 360 consoles have had a terrific experience from their first day, and continue to, day in and day out. But when anyone questions the reliability of our product, or our commitment to our customers, it's something I take very seriously.

We have been following this issue closely, and with on-going testing have identified several factors that can cause a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights on the console. To address this issue, and as part of our ongoing work, we have already made certain improvements to the console.

We are also implementing some important policy changes intended to keep you in the game, worry-free.

As of today, all Xbox 360 consoles are covered by an enhanced warranty program to address specifically the general hardware failures indicated by the three flashing red lights on the console. This applies to new and previously-sold consoles. While we will still have a general one year console warranty (two years in some countries), we are announcing today a three-year warranty that covers any console that displays a three flashing red lights error message. If a customer has an issue indicated by the three flashing red lights, Microsoft will repair the console free of charge—including shipping—for three years from the console’s purchase date. We will also retroactively reimburse any of you who paid for repairs related to problems indicated by this error message in the past. In doing so, Microsoft stands behind its products and takes responsibility to ensure that every Xbox 360 console owner continues to have a fantastic gaming experience.

If we have let any of you down in the experience you have had with your Xbox 360, we sincerely apologize. We are taking responsibility and are making these changes to ensure that every Xbox 360 owner continues to have a great experience.

This will take a few days to roll out globally, and I appreciate your continued patience as we launch this program. I've posted an FAQ that should address some additional questions, and we'll update it over the next few days.

I want to thank you, on behalf of all us at Microsoft, for your loyalty."

Stop apologizing and get off your ass and make a system that doesn't break. There will be no magic Peter Moore pixie fairies fixing all the 360s in the world, the system is unchanged... A 3-year warranty is really just a band-aid, albeit a large one. Is just wanting to play games too much to ask? The system is not any more reliable than it was, the 2nd GPU heatsink is a 'hardware patch' and the 3 red rings will be the final boss of Halo 3.

"1/3 Ain't Bad" - Future Peter Moore Quote

"EB Games held conference calls for its Canadian stores informing them of the extended warranty policy changes and revealing alarming failure rates of the Xbox 360. “The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent,” said former EB Games employee Matthieu G., adding that failure rate was even greater for launch consoles."

read more | digg story

Been waiting a month for my 2nd dead system to come back, double the wait the first time it broke. It's just annoying as hell having a $400 piece of electronics equipment that can die randomly, not to mention the $480 version isn't even any safer, plus they still haven't fixed the d-pad.

MS cheaped out, (yet sells us pictures at pure profit) and we all have to suffer for their mistakes. The Core pack was an ominous sign more people should have paid attention to. Unfortunately for us, hardware quality didn't seem like a high priority compared to a 2005 launch and being able to turn a profit within 2 years.

In addition to getting great games this fall, the PS3 is a more capable machine with a solid design, Blu-ray's larger disc space and a standard hard drive. The Wii is just unstoppable and MS is helping keep it that way.

Inconvenience = unhappy consumers who will not stay loyal forever.
"1/3 Ain't Bad" - Future Peter Moore Quote
"Less than 2/5 of 360 owners are disappointed" - Future Peter Moore Quote
"Halo 3 won't hit PC for a couple years" - Future Peter Moore Quote
"You get what you pay for" - Future Kaz Hirai Quote

Coincidence?

Maybe it's that guy who's on his 12th system or maybe it's that guy who should be helping remedy this situation.